Santiago Canyon College graphic design professor Fernando Del Rosario is a creative at heart.
Whether he is developing marketing solutions for his clients through his agency, Concept Zombie, producing original artwork for local gallery showings or inspiring the next generation of graphic design students, Del Rosario is always creating.
Earlier this fall, Del Rosario shared some of his personal artwork with the SCC community when a portion of his Real Heroes collection was on display at the SCC Art Gallery in September.
The genesis of the Real Heroes collection is rooted in Del Rosario’s childhood love for comic books. Born in the Philippines, he and his family moved to Detroit when he was 11 years old in search of a better life.
During those first years in the U.S., Del Rosario began reading and collecting comic books. To him, they were a portal into the fantastic world of superheroes, with inspiring stories of how the characters helped those around them who were less fortunate.
“When we came to America, a lot of people helped us out, from helping us find an apartment or a house to rent, to clothes that I wore in middle school and high school,” Del Rosario said. “So when I read these books, the stories really resonated with me.”
Born with the creative gene, Del Rosario graduated from Detroit’s College for Creative Studies with a graphic design degree. He later moved to Southern California to pursue marketing and advertising work with the agency that handled Taco Bell. But he never had the heart to part with the comic books he spent hours reading as a child.
So, as creatives do, Del Rosario came up with a unique solution for his beloved collection – he reimagined the comic books into large-scale pieces of art, a way to share the love and joy these stories and characters gave him as a young boy with a new audience through a different medium.
These mixed-media pieces were created by taking pages from the vintage comic books and assembling…
Read the full article here