To cartoon or not to cartoon, that is the question...

Hi there, I'm back to keep on rambling... I mean, sharing my thoughts about my life as a pin-up artist. It is not a secret that the artwork I do as a pin-up artist is... well, pin-ups. But, whoever knows my artwork or has followed it for a while, can notice a change and shift when it comes to the style that I render. As I mentioned recently, my current style is more realistic, without being a portrait. I feel like that the cartoons I am rendering these days, are closer to a portrait style. Close, but not quite there... and I want to keep it that way.

Let me explain why I say this. Many many years ago, I started to get interested in doing portraits. Nothing fancy, just interested in copying what I saw in photos. Eventually, that hobby got a bit polished and ultimately focused on doing portraits of women. Specifically, pin-ups. I started with pencil, then added paintbrushes, and finally airbrush along with digital media. Alternatively to these portraits, I started to render cartoon pin-ups. Same as I did with my portraits, these cartoons were inspired by the work of many incredible artists. So, to make it more clear: I started to work on pin-ups in two different styles at the same time: portraits and cartoons.

From the beginning, I wanted to make a distinction. My portraits should look like portraits, and my cartoons like cartoons. Simple. With time, my cartoons started to become more popular than my portraits. They were quicker to do, more appealing to the general public, in another words: more commercial. As a consequence, during the last years, I have been working more on cartoons than anything else. For this same reason, my cartoon style has changed very constantly (more practice = more ideas). But, I always had a certain tendency: to make my cartoons more realistic. I always saw my two styles as two different extremes of the same theme (pin-ups), and with time, I have realized that I tend to get them closer to each other. That is why my cartoons start to look a bit more like portraits, as if I was trying to fuse both styles, which in a way, subconsciously, that's what I do.

Fusing both styles, that would be good. What I don't want is to bury one in the other. What I mean with this is that I don't want to lose the cartoon quality and humor of these images. I don't want my cartoons to become portraits... but I like to play around anyway. That is why my current cartoons don't really look as such... but don't look like portraits either. I am in between, and as long as I am there, "in between", I am fine.

So, the experiments (experiments? who am I? Dr. Frankenpin-up?) and new approaches continue. I am happy to be rendering my current style of artwork. I have proved that I can do portraits and that I can do cartoons. So, why not use the skills learned to do both and create something in between.

So, are my cartoons still cartoons? Not in an orthodox way, but their quality is definitely present in the work that I do. This style will last until I get the urge of shifting again... which I know I will. And that there, is the part that I love of doing artwork: there aren't rules, at least not rules for everybody.

I will continue having fun, and I hope you have fun with my artwork as well.

​~Pops.