10 Things You Should Know About Me: Welcome to my blog!

Hola and welcome, my name is Yamel Figueroa and I'm an illustrator and character designer. On a journey. Yet again. I'm on a mission to re-discover and fall in love with making art. I've been trying to find my voice and what it is I want to do with my art. I thought a good way of doing that was by starting a blog to talk about tips, tricks, stories, defeats, wins and everything else that has been a part of my life as an artist...a life I feel like it's just beginning. As well as talking about the process of this journey.

Here are 10 things you should know about me:

1. I knew I wanted to work in animation/illustration since I was 6 years old and went to The Magic of Disney Animation at MGM Studios. Seeing animators do their magic in front of my eyes really changed something in my brain's chemistry.

2. Every-single-day I miss going to art school...the feeling of walking to a class with your bag full of materials to spend a good 4-5 hours drawing! Nothing beats that!

3. My mom is an architect and because of that I had art materials surrounding me ever since I was born. This was bound to happen.

4. Because I have a bachelor's and a master's degree both in Fine Arts I've working with many mediums, this is great but sometimes my mind wants to create in gouache, digital and sculpted all at the same time.

5. Music is a really big part of my art, I always listen to music depending on the theme I'm creating art for at the moment.

6. It's still hard to believe sometimes but I've illustrated 3 books! And I want to do more illustration works this year.

7. Working on my portfolio always scares me, but it must be done. If you struggle with this too, we can talk about it in a future post!

8. Vintage style but never vintage values.

9. Sketching is my favorite part of creating art.

10. It's not the first time I've felt "lost" with my art but it's the time I want to most make it work and it being 100% me. I'm ready to make things happen this year and I hope you'll take this journey with me!