Mel Marcelo- Vector Artist

Jim Morrison

Digital art has given birth to many various forms of design in recent years- as seen through my last blog artist Georg Nees, the "father" of digital art. It's even more incredible to compare and see the progression of technology through imagination- thanks to the availability of adobe illustrator and paint shop applications for your home computer. My current in class project, known as vector art, has been one of the greatest challenges I've faced artistically due to its high level of skill and patience. Essentially one must trace a given portrait of facial depth, map out sections in which the features differ, and then apply transitioning tones layer by layer till the face is recreated through an animated format. 

The artist I have chosen to represent is Mel Marcelo, an aspiring vector master currently residing in San Diego California. Born in the Philippines, Marcelo moved state side during high school and studied at University of California San Diego till 1992. That was all I could find during my Google search and had to reside mostly on his obnoxious Facebook, consisting of thousands of selfies at various concerts with people half his age. 

With that aside, Marcelo is nothing short of epic- creating almost effortless replicas of portraits, some even holding a parallel realism to the real thing. Of his simpler, but still powerful pieces, he recreates music legend Jim Morrison through a classic pop art style. Dominate shades of red, white, grey, and black are used to show off his chiseled and clean features. I find this piece appealing because I take pride in modern works of simplicity, a success similar to that of stencil art. Other vectors revolve largely around pop, and electronic music artists such as Tiesto, as seen bellow. While he uses much diversity through his vector works, this one in particular caught my eye due to it's resemblance towards 1970's, 1980's film posters- which inspired me as a film major.  

For more on Mel Marcelo, check out his flickr for dozens more.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/melmarcelo/