Serpa – 5 – (Travel Sketches Portugal 2009)

I still haven’t finished to work on my sketches from our last trip through Portugal in June/July 2009, still hanging around in Serpa… I am kind of saturated now with this work, I would like to stop, but on the other side, I still have many cute sketches, which need some work, and I can’t really put them on the side. Yesterday evening I felt quite down, felling trapped in this work somehow. I want to do other stuff, and I want to go on holidays again, but on the other side, I don’t want to spend my life working on travel sketches! An unpleasant dilemma…

Going on holidays without sketching the new places we see is for me unthinkable, but coming back and starting again to work on travel sketches, is unthinkable as well! Above all because it looks like as we will do a big trip in January/February, to totally new places for me, and surely when I will come back, I will have a lot of work to do…

Oh yes, I know, moaning is not very sexy  (this is what I say to Kevin all the time!    ), and above all obscene when one has such a great life as we have!!!

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These art works are available directly on-line as Giclee print in many different dimensions, on paper or canvas, and also as greeting card. Just click on the widgets below to access my FAA store

And more generally you can see what all I paint by going to my gallery “Miki’s Enchanted World”

Golf in France: The Vivendi Trophy

Opposing Continental Europa to GB & I  (Great Britain & Irland). After 3 days, it does not stay very well for the continent… a great competition though, a little bit like the Ryder’s Cup between Europa and the USA. I always enjoy very much these teams competitions, and so do the players I believe..

Wonderful weather on the French course of Saint Nom La Breteche where the Trophy takes place. I was there many years ago, to watch at a tournament of the PGA tour… the next day my brother was marrying in Paris, I myself lived in Germany at that time… Anf the day before, I had been in Disney Land Paris, doing guess what?

Playing golf myself!

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The TV coverage started very early this morning, and it was a wonderful autumn atmosphere on the golf course… it reminded me when I spent some months in a flat on a golf course in Alsace, about 10 years ago. Every day at 8 I was on the golf course, alone… I simply loved it!

Serpa – 4 – (Travel Sketches Portugal 2009)

That little olf woman in the sketch, who is trying to open her door, is one of the rare Portuguese people who came and spoke to me while I was sketching. A lovely olf lady, who wanted to know what i was doing there, by no means understanding that I could find some charm in what i was seeing! She was above all worrying about me sitting in the sun without a hat… i gave her one of my galleries leaflets -I had nothing else, not even that sketch which I had just started!-  with all the tiny little images of my paintings, and she was over the moon, carrying into her house as if it was a treasure. it was very touching…

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All these paintings (and many others!) are available as Giclee print in different sizes and on different supports (paper, canvas) in my FAA Gallery

Golf in Austria

Faithful to my golf addiction and my intention to make a series of the golf courses where the European PGA tournaments take place, I have spent the last few days in Austria, in the Golf club Fontana, by Vienna. Well, I was not really there, but in front of my computer, enjoying the game and making sketches. Unfortunately my favourite, an Englishman, didn’t win, but a young Spaniard did, who seems to have a great career in front of him. At least he has a divine swing, and also seems to have the necessary humility and wisdom to become a big golf champion. I just wish he would relax and smile a little bit more when he is playing…

Anyway, here are 2 of the paintings I did, based on the sketches. I might do some more, as I found the course design very inspiring, and due to the lovely weather some of the players were wearing artistic shirts. I never chose to feature the golf celebrities in my paintings, I just follow the colours…

Apropos colours: it is a big challenge for me me to paint golf motifs, as I hate the colour green!!!!

A dream comes true

An important part of our life is coming to an end: the construction of our  little house sauna! It has been a dream of mine, ever since I can remember, to have a sauna at home, as it is for me the best way to relax after a work day, after sport, or simply when it becomes a little bit cold…

I hardly waste dreams… by that I mean I am not a real dreamer, not one of these people whose dreams always stay dreams. I always take care to have reasonable dreams, of the sort I know I can realise if I only make the necessary efforts.It took a lot of time to realise this one, 20 years… 10 years ago, I was so far along, almost, but in the last moment I used the room planned for the sauna as an atelier… it was more important I guess!

Well, it is so far NOW. The sauna is ready, we are just missing the stones to put on the oven. It is not easy in Andalucia to find all the stuff you need to run a sauna…  the stones have to be ordered, and if we are lucky, we will get them within one week. We had ordered the other stuff, bucket, ladle, sand clock and thermometer in Germany, and they arrived yesterday evening.

What a fiesta!

Yes, we both have a lot of pleasure with all this stuff, and can hardly wait to use it. This morning I could not resist to make a sketch of the new sauna kit! As you can see, Kevin is even already inside the sauna, sticking his cute tongue out to YOU!

Serpa – 3 – (Travel Sketches Portugal 2009)

After I had spent 2 or 3 days in Serpa sketching all kind of buildings, I got quite bored, and needed to sketch something else. This is why, on the  7th of July (2009), I sat with kevin at a cafe outside, and made sketches of the people sitting there. I liked the faces I saw, and had quite a nice time doing that. As always my sketches tend to be caricatures, I just can’t help it… but I swear that I have warm and sympathetic feelings towards all these people I sketch, my intention is really not to make them look silly or ridiculous or whatever negative… I am sorry if some recognise themselves (what i doubt in fcat as I am not really searching for a good likeness) and feel offended… 

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These are some of the people I sketched that day. if you wnat to see more, go please to my Flickr account

Serpa – 2 – (Travel Sketches Portugal 2009)

Some days ago I presented here my first sketches from Serpa, our last stop in Portugal, in July 2009, Here are some more.

One of the most beautiful lanterns I have ever seen in my life. They were all over the town. That dragon must have something to do with the town history, but I have no idea what as I I am not  keen at all on history! The guy going down the staits is an invention of me, no idea who lives in this house!

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Somehow I can’t help making caricatures of the people. perhaps it is a natural reaction to me being forced to make very accurate, realistic portraits when I paint on commission…

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When i put the colours on this ink sketch done outside, i could not help adding the festive decoration in the sky. it reminded me that last year, as we were in Portugal, it was a big feast everywhere we were, all town had this kind of stuff floating in the sky. This time, we didn’t see any… perhaps because it was later in the year… anyway simply a trick to break the vertical composition, I needed this contrast!

Golf in German Land

Here we are again, the weekend has started and with it, a new tournament from The European PGA Tour. This week all my heroes are playing in Germany, at Gut Laerchenhof, next to Koeln. In fact the tournament started already on Thursday, and yesterday I did a golf painting of it. As I said before, my aim is to make a series of paintings featuring all the tournaments of the Tour, for the year 2009/2010. Simply a new idea which occurred to me last week.

When I look at golf, I am not only concentrated on the players. I do love the golf courses as landscapes too, they are generally beautiful places. This time in Germany I was shocked to see some red/orange trees already… autumn is coming! Something like autumn is a very strange feeling when one lives in Andalusia, it simply does not exist. The glance of the autumn colours in these countries where I once lived (France, Germany) always fills me with some kind of nostalgy. But honestly, on Thursday the sky was grey there and it didn’t look very warm… this surely is not somethiing I am longing for!

This is why, I suppose,  this painting has become especially vibrant in the coulours, I couldn’t help it!

This tournament is called “The Mercedes-Benz Championship”, this is why you can see the well-known logo everywhere on the tee. I hope also that there will be a Mercedes to win for a hole in one at some hole, as I would love to make a golf painting including a Mercedes… I love to paint cars!!!

Serpa – 1 – (Travel Sketches Portugal 2009)

So, I have now started to work on the travel sketches from Serpa (Portugal), which was the last place we visited this summer (June/July 2009). In fact we wanted to go much farther, but our motor home problem was still not solved and I was extremely frustrated by this endless hunting after a cell battery and electricity. We still had 10 days planned for the holidays, until we had to head back to Spain, where Kevin had to take a plane to perform in a gig  in Bosnia in the middle of July.

At that point I was so down that I wanted to stop the trip and  go back home. But Kevin insisted that we shouldn’t shorten our holidays, for which we had waited so long and had been already  forced to shorten a lot. The only alternative which I accepted was to find a good camp site, and to stay there and relax until the end. By chance we found a great one, in “Serpa”. The main reason why we loved it is that it was in front of a sensational Olympic swimming pool, which would allow us to swim everyday our 1000 meters. The town Serpa, from what I saw at the first glance, was certainly beautiful enough to allow me to have motifs to sketch for one week, and the landscapes around were flat enough to have some relaxing bike rides. In short: the perfect place ! They even had, like almost everywhere in Portugal nowadays, a nice and free internet centre, where we could check our mails daily or do some internet work. Although I must say that to go on the internet was the last thing I fancied doing on holiday this year!

So, here are the first sketches from Serpa. I won’t show them all here, it could be boring for my visitors, but here is the link to my Flick account, where I publish them all, little by little. There, if you browse around my galleries, you will be also be able to see all my Portugal sketches, from last year too.

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Golf obsession

Yesterday it was “only” Love, now it’s Obsession! I had so much pleasure this weekend in watching the golf tournament in Crans-sur-Sierre (Switzerland), and finally to make a painting  of it, that I decided to do some more golf art work, featuring that fantastic golf course. I might even do a whole series of paintings featuring all the courses and tournaments from The European PGA tour. I love the idea, but I am not sure I won’t be bored  before I reach the end! Well, I’ll do what I can.

The idea is to make at least one picture which evokes the tournament in a slightly different way to showing fairways, bunkers, lakes, etc.. Last weekend, in Crans-sur-Sierre, it was The Omega Masters, and I thought it would be nice to make a painting featuring the tee of the hole where the players had the chance to get an Omega watch if they managed to get a hole in one. Anybody following the tour, by looking at this painting, will understand what it is about, where it is, and even which hole it is (I have forgotten it!). I also found that a watch is a great element to add on a golf painting, knowing that time, and more specifically timing, is so crucial to get good results!

And no, before you ask, I’m not paid by Omega…(Though I’m open to offers!   )