My new Nomadas Sketching Bag

Eventually I found the bag of my dreams!

When I go sketching outside -which is something I do very often-, I always take the minimum amount of stuff: a sketching book and a pen. But there is a problem:  I like my big sketching book. Well, not that big, 40 x 40 cm, plus the spring along the top, but just big enough so as not to fit in any bag. Well, I bought one once in a German art shop, but it was all black, so serious. It makes me sad just to look at it, no way I can use it to go and sketch, where I do need to feel in a positive state of mind!

I couldn’t believe my eyes as I saw this one in a Cafe-Shop in Bubion, a little village from the Sierra Nevada some days ago. Not only does my sketch book fit in it exactly, but the bag is soooo cool, so artistic. More or less like in this painting I did of it. Lovely, crazy bag, isn’t it?

Well, I will use the occasion to introduce you to our new Easelspace gallery. In the last 3 weeks, I presented here

Travelscapers (landscapes from all around the word)

Easelfaces (portraits and figures from around the world)

Now we have just launched our

Still LiFe gallery

All sorts of still life from international painters will be presented here. if you want to join one of these galleries, we must charge 10 dollars the year for one  (15 for 2, 20 for 3). We have a lot of costs and work with all these sites, hence the fees. But we are doing a great deal to gradually increase the value of and the visits to, these galleries, and aiming to be one day, as soon as possible, among the most visited online galleries for people searching for landscapes, portraits or still lifes.

But if you can’t afford the membership to our special galleries you can still join us at Easelspaces, the “mother” gallery. Mother is generous and doesn’t cost anything .

We are a nice community of international artists (amateurs, semi-professionals and professionals) gathered on that great site created by artists for artists, and offering many possibilities for presenting your art and developing a nice relationship with other artists from the world.

Sketching Trip in The Sierra Nevada – 01 –

24th of July 2010

Turre – Almeria – Trevelez

We left Turre in our Boomobile about 3 in the afternoon. As always, travel preparations were minimal: some stuff to paint, some stuff to eat, some stuff to wear, not forgetting some warm sweatshirts and wandering boots this time. Then out of the house, into the motorhome, and off we went. Our destination:  the Sierra Nevada, Andalucia, Spain. Nowhere special in mind there really, I had just googled a little bit before we left and written down a list of mountain villages, some of them lying quite high, about 1400 metres. We would probably visit them if they happened to cross our road up there. This is the way we mostly travel: hardly planning, and led by fate.

But I had some very uncomfortable doubts: the weather was not good. We hadn’t seen any rain for months here in Turre, but suddenly, today, it was raining and the sky was black. Climbing Spanish mountain roads up to the Sierra Nevada in a big motorhome under torrential rain was not one of the most reassuring thoughts ..

Well, somewhere on the way the rain stopped, and as soon as we left the highway about 40 kilometres after Almeria the road started climbing and deviating seriously. I felt increasingly uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that thoughts of going back home crossed my mind at each curve and each new gradient. And although the rain had stopped, dark clouds were still hanging in the sky, the higher we drove, the darker they became. When we eventually reached El Parque Natural de La Sierra Nevada, it was about 7 PM, A spectacular landscape, no doubt, worth a life of paintings. But like always in these kind of places, no chance to park the motorhome safely. I find it always so frustrating to go through these dream landscapes, to start putting in my head lines and colours on an imaginary piece of paper and then not to be really able to start: it hurts deeply. The downside of travelling in a motorhome… the only one though!

In fact we wanted to stop now for the night, but we couldn’t find a place. We soon reached a little village called Berchulez. I wished we could have stayed there, it was lovely, and had loads of motifs  for me to sketch. But there was just a big town fiesta going on and hundreds of cars and scooters and people and animals were trying to find some place in that tiny space and we almost got stuck in the middle of the village – Of course, to the big pleasure of the people there. No way then to look for place, we simply escaped, and again it hurt deeply in my artist’s soul that I couldn’t do even one sketch!

We decided to head towards Trevelez, one of the villages on the list. I must say that the road to it was one of the scariest I have ever been on. I suddenly understood what was meant with these road re-inforcement works announcements we had seen at the entrance of The Parque Natural: 600 000 Euro here, 700 000 Euro there, for sections of road not even 10 kilometres long. No wonder: everywhere, tons of rocks and stones were lying on the side of the road, well, on the road itself too, and some parts of the road were totally destroyed, sometimes half of it totally missing, or fallen away underneath, or above, and cracks and creases all along… incredibly scary, believe me! I guess this was the result of the abundant rains we had in Spain some months ago. I can’t even imagine what really happened there, how many accidents must have occurred on this road alone, how many deaths, and how many places must have been cut off from the rest of the world for how long! Really it must have been terrible. The whole scenery reminded me of the images of Haiti after the earthquake, on a smaller scale of course, but still apocalyptic somehow…

The situation was aggravated as the mist came up and only the first meters on the road in front of the motorhome seemed to exist… the rest had totally disappeared. Needless to say, I was scared to death and to tell the truth I wished we had gone back home as it first crossed my mind. But home was far now, and it was getting darker. To drive back on that hell of a road in the other direction, in fact on the very side of the road which had fallen away and was often bordered by some deep precipices, was simply unthinkable.

Anyway, we eventually arrived in Trevelez, proudly standing 1476 metres high.

“In Trevelez you will touch the sky”

is written at the entrance of the town, and indeed, the white buildings climb up the mountain, higher and higher,  to finally disappear into the sky.. or into the mist, but what is the difference anyway!

Sorry, no sketch to show for this first day of the trip… let’s hope mañana will be more prolific!

Just a tiny little watercolour which I quickly did before dinner on that evening, an impression from memory of the town as we arrived

Spock in Easelspace

This morning, like almost every morning,  Kevin was working very hard on our balcony, sunbathing on the sunbed, well, HE calls it working, as he apparently needs a nice tan for the rock stage…

Anyway, I stepped out onto the balcony to serve my hard working rock star  a nicely cooled water, and as I suddenly looked up I saw that dog, with its head poking through the railings, and staring at Kevin with deep interest.. Well, I couldn’t check it, but I bet this dog was a female! 

And yet: we call her Spock, because…  of the long ears of course!

I will take this occasion to present you with the next project I have started with Adrian Durham. In fact  4 persons are involved, but that is irrelevant for the moment. Anyway, 2 weeks ago I presented you Travelscapers, featuring landscapes from all around the world. You can read more about it here.

Following this concept, we have now created easelfaces, where International artists present the portraits and faces of people and animals from all around the world.

Easelfaces is a site for artists and art lovers, run by artists. I would love to invite portraits and figures painters from around the world to join us. Well, when I say “invite”, it is not quite true. Unfortunately to run such a site costs money, and much time. We can offer our time, but for the rest we will have to charge a fee of 10 $ per year to be a member of travelscapers,

But think about it: together we are much stronger. The chance that our works get found and purchased on the net is much higher on big artists community sites than on private artists sites. We will do all the necessary work to get as much traffic as possible there.

By the way, Travelscapers and Easelfaces are both sub projects of Easelspace,com

If you are interested in participating in any of these 3 projects, please contact me at miki@travelscapers.com

or leave a comment here.

The Donkey Work of a Plein-Air Sketcher

The other day, before going swimming, we had to do some chores in Garrucha, a town, well, a fishing port actually, nearby. Going to the bank, going to the notary, going shopping, stuff like that…

Kevin, knowing how much I hate it and consequently how dangerous it is to live close to me in such moments, had the wisdom to propose doing it all alone, I should take my sketching book and make some sketches while waiting for him. What wouldn’t he say anyway to see the thunderclouds disappear from my face! He didn’t need to say it twice, the smile was back on my face, the sketch book in my hand, he was happy, I was happy. So simple can everyday life be… when one has the right partner!

We parked the car by the seafront in Garrucha. My first thought was that I could do some seascape, or draw some half naked sunbathers, but my eye was caught at once by the blue wooden gate of a house on the other side of the sea promenade. This gate looked so happy, somehow, with so many flowers and stuff around it, that I forgot the sea and the sunbathers and chose to sketch it. Well, here it is.

As I often do when I sketch, I started with the stuff which most attracts me, in this case the gate, and then gradually build the rest around it.  You see what I meant with a happy gate? With all these flowers and leaves and bricks and windows and pillars dancing around him!

The little girl with the ice cream was not really there, it was much more a vision, a vision of myself when I was a little bit smaller and still had dark hair… I lived in a happy house too… and still do!

Kevin came back much earlier than expected. Too early to go to the swimming pool, he proposed to head there, but to stop on the way among fields.

“You could draw the donkey”, he said, “at least he never moves, easy to sketch!”

What a great idea again! For some days there has been a donkey by the side of the road,  a lovely immobile donkey, the perfect subject to sketch.

We drove there, and here he was again, standing alone in the same position as he had been standing for days and nights! I went out of the car with my sketching book, kept a respectable distance from the animal, and started sketching.  Starting with the ears as it is what most fascinated me in that subject, then the rest of the head, then starting the line of the back, then…

Then suddenly the bloody donkey started running like crazy towards the car!  I couldn’t believe my eyes! Well, in case you wonder why the bloody animal moved after an entire existence of perfect immobility I will explain: Kevin -probably bored by this total ‘bucolicity’ around him, had suddenly started to sing some loud rock. Perhaps the donkey thought that Kevin was calling him, or he loves rock, the fact is that he became incredibly excited and started wildly running towards the car. Good for the car that he was tethered and could not go too far!

So much for   “The donkey does not move!”

Needless to say that I was quite angry,  having just started to sketch.  But well, I couldn’t help noticing the humour of the situation and joined Kevin in a good laughing party..

I added the rest of the donkey as best I could, the rest of the back, the tail, the four legs, the landscape around… and this is the result

Judging by the expression of  the eye -can you see the spark of excitement in it? -, I must have caught it right in the moment when he heard Kevin’s voice and  was about to jump around! Sorry if he does not look really like a donkey,  not my fault, any complaints should be addressed to Kevin… or to the donkey!

Well, in the meanwhile, the donkey has become my friend. We stop and I caress him everyday we come by now. Kevin doesn’t  even need to sing rock any more to animate him!

And I  have even given him a name: Donky.  

And even made a portrait of him

The Alternate Realities of a Restless Plein-air Artist

” …. We spent many of her holidays in the Spanish fields together, painting among olive and almond trees in front of these weird Spanish mountains which seem to stand on old elephant legs… “

Altea La Vieja, Spain, January 2008

This is a post I wrote yesterday in our New Travelscapers blog, the blog of all artists travelling around the world in Arty Days…

If you want to red the entire post, which is about the alternate realities of a restless plein-air artist, come here

Sexy Fleurs de Lys

Some days ago I promised to post my last two flowers paintings here.. and I almost forgot! I go so fast from one thing to another, I can’t keep track with myself as an artist. Of course, everybody says to me:

“You should focus!”

but what an absurdity! The only thing I should do is to have fun while  painting, and there is for me nothing more boring than painting always the same thing in the same style. This is why my eyes and brushes jump in all directions, always finding something new and attractive to focus on it. My galleries look mental: when one looks at them one has the feeling that a hundred different artists are at work!

Well, it’s just me, the tiny little Miki:

TOTALLY UNFOCUSSED YOURS!

My Kevin, who belongs to the people who normally find flowers paintings boring,  looked quite interested as he saw that one, and said:

“They are so much in your face!”

I wonder if he found them sexy…  I do! 

Anyway, I  always loved the fleurs de lys, amazing creatures really! And love them even more since we were in New-Orleans this year.. As their emblem it is everywhere there! Needless to say I bought a lot of clothes covered with fleurs de lys. Funny by the way, as I told my elderly French mother that the fleur de Lys is the emblem of New-Orleans, she reacted quite “offended”, saying:

“First of all, it is the emblem of the French Royalty!!!!”

These French, they are sooooo Nationalistic!

My second recent painting featuring fleurs de lys.. a little less in the face, more decorative than sexy, and with much stuff around! Sometimes I love these overloaded paintings, where stuff is going on everywhere!

The travelscapers have a travel blog

I told you recently about the new project “Travelscapers”. We are already a little group, and we have started uploading wonderful paintings from many places around the world: Peru, Italy, Romania, New-Orleans, Caribbean,  England, Scotland, Hungary, France, Spain, Portugal… if you are interested in travel art and landscapes, have a look here

And now I have created a travel bog for the travelscapers. Logical, no:

all the big travellers from history had a travel diary. This is a must!

Me being the travel guide, I have written today my first post in our travel blog. It is called “Spooky spooky!” and tells a mysterious anecdote from my last painting trip, at the beginning of June, to that tiny little Andalusian village by the sea…

Agua Amarga

I have seen some UFOs last night…

Well, not really UFos…

… but they look like them, kind of! Sorry to disappoint you… 

Every now and again, I feel the urge to paint flowers. Many people think that to paint flowers, or still life is quite uncool and old-fashioned, and perhaps it is. But I do enjoy it sometimes. I enjoy the colours, shapes and textures of flowers. And a beautifully done still life can be a delight too. Something with transparent bottles, or metal in which reflections can be seen, fruits… stuff like that! a challenge for the artist! Often I think I should paint this kind of stuff, but I never seem to take the time. A pity!

But flowers, yes, I painted some in my life. But my flowers rarely stand well-arranged in a vase or tied to the earth. O love them free. like I love everything free.

My flowers tend to float in the air, like coloured clouds….
or like UFOs!

But flowers in a vase or tied in a bouquet have their charm too,   as long as the feeling of romanticism remains. I’ll show to you my last two ones in my next post.

Trip to The Past 02: Tarbena

My artistic trip to the past has been leading me since yesterday to a  Spanish mountain village called “Tárbena”, about one hours drive  inland from Albir, the place where I lived before I moved to Turre. This village is a tourist attraction,  simply because it is typically Spanish and is surrounded by a beautiful landscape.

7 years ago I rented a small Casa de pueblo (a village house) and spent 3 days there painting. My intention was to paint a small series of the town and its people, and to exhibit it later on at the local culture house. Well, I did the series, and I had the permission from the town hall to do the show, but somehow I got lost in other projects, and forgot that one. I exhibited some of these paintings on different occasions, some are sold, some have been never exhibited, and some seem to be lost. Right now for example, I am missing 3 watercolour paintings from there, showing the men and the women from Tárbena… I can only hope that I will find them in my former house, which is for sale right now, when I go back there… which won’t happen so soon I guess!

Anyway, here is  one of the village streets

Another view of the village,  from the little patio I had on the top of my rented house… my eyes were delighted by the yellow house, I guess it is obvious, considering the way I emphasized the colour!

Tarbena is quite well known in the area there, is often part of one of the day trips through the mountains, starting from the holiday destinations around there (Benidorm, Altea, Calpe, Jalon, etc.),organised for tourists, It is especially well-known  for a restaurant called “Casa Pinet”. I don’t think that the fame of Casa Pinet comes really from its food, although it is quite good, I have tried it. But the owner is an incredible guy, a one-armed communist with a great personality, and the restaurant inside is full of communist decoration and memorabilia -much stuff with Che Guevara-, but also full of art. The facade of the restaurant of course is red, and the business car too. When I was there, there were a lot of cars parked in front of Casa Pinet, and as a joke, I decided to paint them all red!

The little guy in the background is the owner… the funny thing is that, as I did my series of Tarbena, he appeared on almost all of the paintings.. I must have been very impressed by that guy to see him everywhere. Later on I changed these little figures on my paintings, when it was possible…

I hope Casa Pinet and its owner still exist!

You can purchase prints of these paintings (on paper or canvas) in many different sizes, or a greeting card, in my online gallery. Just click on the widgets below

 

And more generally you can see many of my dreams, nightmares, passions, loves and hates by going to my gallery “Miki’s Enchanted World”

Trip to The Past 01: Altea and Benidorm

Working hard right now on the new project “Travelscapers”, the aim being, as I’ve said before, to gradually cover the world with paintings done by landscape artists from all over the world. In this context I am making a trip back to my past, to all the places where I have been and where I have painted or sketched. It is a tough job, many of my paintings and sketches are gone, sold, or lost or perhaps even thrown away while moving around… Some years ago, before I was active in the internet, I really was not bothered to keep track of my paintings, or at least I didn’t do it seriously, or only occasionally, the most important thing for me having always been the process of painting, not the result. And also I never was a person turned to the past, trying to keep souvenirs… in fact I find it difficult to associate myself with the person I have been before, not just the human being, but also the artist and mathematician. It’s kind of gone!

But well, I need paintings from places right now, and so I am spending a lot of my time searching through my old paintings and my old files. It is quite weird,  I had forgotten that many of them even existed. In this sense this trip back in time is quite interesting, privately and professionally. Funny to see how I painted some years ago… I hope nobody will come here and say:

“You were better then…”

or

“You are better now”

I  hate these kind of comments which people often feel obliged to make.

I feel the same discomfort when somebody comments on one of my works saying”

Probably your best…”

I got such a comment yesterday… I don’t know, perhaps I should be thankful, but I am not. I always feel a certain condescension, and above all: arrogance. Who are they to know what is better?

Anyway here is a painting of Altea, a popular tourist town on the Costa Blanca, which has been painted million of times… I lived in Albir, just 3 kilometers south of Altea until 2 years ago

And then a painting of Benidorm, which in turn is 3 kilometers south of Albir – also very well-known on the Costa Blanca. Not the best kind of fame  around Europe though, I reckon…

Anyway, 50 years ago it was wonderful and I loved it and this was the place where I always felt home, much more than in France. It is certainly no more the case now…

both paintings in acrylics technique, with more or less structure stuff.

And if you want to buy some prints of these paintings, they are available on paper and canvas in many different size. Also as Greeting cards. directly online in my FAA gallery. Just click on the widgets below