Olympics Archery

A quickie for now, from the first Olympic competition I saw:

Archery

A very aesthetic sport I must say, quite inspiring to my artist’s eyes…

I had never seen archery in competition before, never even had an arch in my hands, but I remember a time when I wanted to learn it. I might still do it, but will my hands still be steady enough in my old age, where  they are not even steady enough to draw straight lines! Well, to be honest, I don’t like straight lines in art, they always remind me of the bloody technical drawings I had to do at the beginning of my maths&physics studies… I hated them so much! And I don’t like perfect circles either, so of course I am struggling with the Olympics Rings!

Oly, The Olympics Turtle

After I paid homage to the victory of the Ferrari team at the Formula 1 German Grand Prix from  Hockenheim this weekend by giving birth to The Ferrari Turtle,  I thought it was time to do the same with the Olympics. Shame on me really, me who loves sport so much and has a big body of sport artworks, I didn’t even make one painting celebrating the games in London so far! Ah well, probably because everybody else has, and I don’t like to go with the stream…

So here we go. Tonight I could not sleep any more after awakening from a weird dream. I was in a giant castle, with hundred of rooms, and in each room were sitting giant people in Renaissance theatre costumes awaiting me to paint their portraits. But before that I had to paint first the portraits on their own faces, and when they were finished, they had to look at themselves in the mirror, and say if they liked it. Then I would have to reproduce it on big canvasses.  I had only a short time to paint all these portraits and I was running from room to room, trying to optimize the process. Hundred people were following me everywhere, eager to see me painting these portraits, and my stress increased accordingly, a real nightmare! Anyway I woke up when the tension became too strong, happy to have escaped but totally awake. It was 4 AM. My brain was again in turbo mode, thinking about all kinds of things and projects. And among them, a new turtle started to haunt my brain, until I could not think of anything else and had to get up to paint her

Let me introduce you to:

“Oly”, the Olympics Turtle!

Oly, The Olympics Turtle – By Miki

The little beast could not wait until the morning, she had to come out in the middle of the night! She said she was a little bit late already and was not sure if she was going to make it for the Games Opening ceremony on Friday!

She should probably have put the Ferrari gear on, but I guess the rules don’t allow you to carry the Olympics torch on wheels…

The Ferrari Turtle

I just heard that Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso beat Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel and McLaren’s Jenson Button in a close fight to win the Formula 1 German Grand Prix at Hockenheim. So here is my humble artistic contribution to the Ferrari team.

Many years ago I made a Formula 1 watercolour painting based on a photo I had found in a magazine. In reality it was representing a Ferrari team, but at that time, I did not fancy having so much red on a painting and changed the colours to yellow and blue, having just some red stains here and there.. This was the result

Team Work – watercolour painting, by Miki

Nowadays I have only a small photo of that painting. The original is hanging in an office in Germany, or at least it was bought to this aim. I made a good scan of that photo and I am now able to sell prints of it. But as I found that photo recently, I thought, well, now I am reading to have more red on it, and I made this second version, this time really featuring the Ferrari team. Well appropriated for the today victory!

The Formula 1 Ferrari Team – by Miki

But this is not my only contribution to Ferrari. Some days ago I was working on my new artist website www.mikidegoodaboom.com, gradually adding artworks to the galleries “Fun Fun Fun!”. More precisely, I was building up the sub-gallery “Fun with Turtles”, a little collection of artworks featuring turtles which I created some years ago for the World Turtle Day. And I don’t know what crossed my mind, but suddenly I thought that I had to paint a Ferrari Turtle! I probably thought that these lovely animals are a little bit too slow for our fast times and need some extras… 

The Ferrari Turtle – by Miki

These paintings are available directly online as Giclee prints in many different dimensions, on paper or canvas, and also as greeting cards. Just click on the images themselves or on the widgets below to access my shop online.

My Guitar Heroes

Guitar Hero Jimi Hendrix – by Miki

One week ago I announced the launching of my new artist website, www.mikidegoodaboom.com. The site is in its early days though, presenting only selections of my paintings and series. I will gradually add more and more paintings, trying to build up a complete repertoire of my artwork. Probably an impossible task considering the quantity of paintings I have! And I am speaking only about the last 8 years , as everything before has become lost, left behind, given away, torn up, cooked, eaten, etc…

Anyway I have started completing the music collection, as it is one of my favourite painting themes. But before I can do it , I first need some kind of musician classification to create sub-galleries from the main gallery “Painting The Music”. I have decided that one of them would be called “Guitar Heroes”, in which I plan to publish all kind of guys and girls on the guitar.

Poor naive me :  This morning I had an awful discussion with my partner the English rocker Kev Moore. He said:

“Guitar heroes is an appelation controlee, you can’t call any random guitarist a Guitar Hero!”

” Why not? For me any guy or girl playing the guitar beautifully or looking great holding the guitar is a guitar hero!”

” You are so wrong! A guitar hero means an internationally acclaimed and worshipped personality on the electric guitar, to whom every fan and guitarist looks up to!”

Me wrong? He usually says that I was born right! You can see why rock was called the devil’s music!

“Only electric guitar? You mean, I can’t put Tal Wilkenfeld under Guitar Heroes?

“Of course not, she plays bass!”

“But a bass guitar is a guitar and she is a virtuoso on it! She must be a guitar hero!”

“No way!!! But you can put Jennifer Batten there…”

At least the great Jennifer! She found my painting of her on the net once, left a beautiful comment and went and bought it straight away! But coming back to our discussion: at that point I started feeling such impatience, and frustration and injustice growing inside of me. I have some great artworks of people playing guitar and I had the feeling none of them would be allowed in the guitar heroes category.

Guitar Hero Joe Bonamassa – by Miki

“But Joe Bonamassa is one, isn’t he?”

“Yes, HE is one, of course!”

“And not Glenn Hughes?”

“No, he plays the bass!”

At that point I had had enough. By mentioning Glenn Hughes, I thought I would get him with a sucker punch, as he is his favourite musician. I thought he would become weak and let him through. But no, not one second of doubt: not even Glenn Hughes qualifies as a Guitar Hero! I was deeply shocked. “F…k” them all with their definitions!

But I did not want to renounce to the phrase Guitar Heroes as it sounds so great, so romantic and exactly describes my guitarists.

“Well, I will call the gallery “My Guitar Heroes” then!”

He was obviously not very impressed by that clever idea, and had not even a smile for me. Kev Moore not smiling at me, this was serious. He simply looked at me with an almost imperceptible expression of disdain saying: how dare she????

But he had had enough too, so he said:

“If you need to… but be prepared to get some hassle there!”

This was definitely enough. I was ready for a big rebellion.

” Leave me alone now, I call my galleries however I want!”

and I went away, furious. I went to my computer, created the sub-gallery “Guitar Heroes” – without the “my” well noted – and put in it all the beautiful guitarists I had painted. And among them, the most beautiful one of course: Kev Moore!

I thought with a deep pleasure how angry, or let us better say embarrassed, he would be to see himself among people like Joe Bonamassa, Jimi Hendrix, Jennifer Batten, Steve Stevens, Jeff Beck, etc. and on top of it with a bass guitar in the hands!!! God, I loved that revenge against the definitions, very rock ‘n’ roll indeed!!!!

My guitar hero Kev Moore  – By Miki

Later on, I showed Kevin my new gallery, already ‘live’ out there on the net. He was gracious enough not to say one word but his face spoke volumes of shame and blame!

But you know what: I don’t care! Kevin is a beautiful guitar hero to me. To many others certainly too as many strangers take loads of photos of him while he is on stage out there. So, if you want to give me his predicted hassle now, do it, I have no fear! I will be delighted to discuss the subject with you.

These paintings are available directly online as Giclee prints in many different dimensions, on paper or canvas, and also as greeting cards. Just click on the images themselves or on the widgets below to access my FAA Gallery.

Only Kevin is not for sale at the moment, but if you insist, I will put him on the market. But don’t think twice, ladies out there, only his image: the real guy is not for sale!

PS: I have  a little confession to make here. Before I put the gallery online, I did have a tiny little hesitation and went checking out Google guitar heroes. The first thing I found was an Australian site called guitar heroes, featuring many guitarists whom I had never heard of. This was enough to get my green light!

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Le Tour de France 2012

Le Tour de France 11 – by Miki

After the 10 artworks series of the Tour de France 2011 I did last year, I thought I was done with it. But well, this weekend, for the first time since the 2012 tour started, I had time to follow the stages and suddenly, again, I felt the urge to do some artworks. Really, the scenes are incredible! I am always fascinated by all these images of the tour, the effort on the cyclist faces, the body movements, the speed, the colours, the landscapes in the background. I just can’t resist, it has to be painted, again and again!

I started in the same style as last year, with bold colours and thick black ink lines for the main outlines, emphasizing the idea of movement. But I could not go on with that style, I got bored. I had done too many paintings in this style previously, not only sports but also music themes. As usual in such cases, I abandoned the old style and let my intuition work, and look, as if by magic,  another style developed naturally! And this is exactly how I love to do art, intuitively, naturally, without any kind of technical and psychological preparations and thoughts. And above all: fast, to avoid me getting bored before I have finished the artwork! 

Le Tour de France 12 – by Miki

Perhaps more impressionist, less defined, however you want to call it. Anyway that guy in his red outfit and fluorescent lime yellow shoes especially impressed and inspired me. He was not alone as I saw him, some others were fighting with him for the lead, but somehow I fancied painting him as a lonesome rider, probably because this is the way how I feel right now: working and working and working, seeing no end and having forgotten where and when and why it started, nobody in sight, fighting alone in an empty universe. Of course I am not alone, but sometimes the fight itself is perceived that way. Probably I should not fight at all and just go with the flow. But on the other hand, if I was not fighting, I would get nothing done and my life would degenerate into chaos!!! There is even a law in thermodynamics stating that fact, so, you know, better keep fighting!

Le Tour de France 13 – by Miki

But back to my red cyclist now. The red colour was so strong and dominating in my perception of the scene that I could hardly put any more colours next to it, they just killed each other, and more importantly, they killed the red. This is why I chose a mostly black, grey and white colouration for the left upper side,  gradually moving into the red, with some lime yellow for the amazing shoes the guy was wearing.

The result looks to me as though HE is bringing the colours to life. Interesting, I think.

These paintings are available directly online as Giclee prints in many different dimensions, on paper or canvas, and also as greeting cards. Just click on the images themselves or on the widgets below to access my FAA Gallery

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Watercoloured Words

In my new artist website www.mikidegoodaboom.com, I have put together, in form of electronic books, poetry which my partner Kev Moore has written, inspired by some of my paintings. So far I have published 2 books:

“A Brush with Poetry”    and     “Watercoloured Words”.

The ” Brush with Poetry” collection is older, more or less from the time just after we met. The artworks are mainly painted in gouache and acrylics.

Recently Kev Moore got inspired by another kind of artworks, mainly painted in watercolour.

In both books it is so far only a short selection of paintings and poems, but I will gradually add more pages.

Also I will certainly add some more poetry books, but it is quite a work to put everything together and I need more time. The next will be a book of the poetry written by Helen Losse, an American poet. She had been inspired by some of my Fantascapes and Landscapes.

So, if you are interested, go to my new website and have a look at the books. At the beginning of the books Kev Moore and I tell about the process of creating these pieces together. And also, less but not least, it is really FUN to flip the pages, it is almost like a real book!

So here you go

A Brush with Poetry

Watercoloured Words

PS: If you are a poet, or any kind of writer, famous or not, and you feel inspired by any of my paintings and want to write about them, or already have , please contact me. It would be a pleasure for me to publish your written work in my website.

Dawn after Dawn…

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Dawn 25 – Watercolour by Miki

Some of my new, or simply new published watercolour lose paintings from the series

“Times of The Day”

They are the kind of paintings which most relax me or calm me down when i need it… to me they are pure

PEACE…

I painted the one above, Dawn 25, very early this morning, in fact at dawn, after my partner left in the middle of the night to fly to a gig to Germany. After he left I could not sleep anymore, and I saw that wonderful day arising from behind our mountains…

Dawn 27 – Watercolour by Miki

And this one had been painted in 2007 according to the date written above my signature… I don’t remember where the inspiration came from. But judging by the little simple white house behind the pink trees, certainly from somewhere in Spain…

Both, as usual, are available directly online as Giclee print in many different dimensions, on paper or canvas, and also as greeting cards. Just click on the images themselves or on the widgets below to access my FAA Gallery

Heraklion in Crete

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Heraklion 02 – Watercolour and Ink travel sketch, by Miki

So, now that my new artist website www.mikidegoodaboom.com is online, I can breathe a little bit, and will do some posts about my time in Crete. I was there in April this year (2012) for 3 weeks. Prior to arriving in Crete we had spent 3 weeks in Cyprus, a wonderful trip about which I have reported much in this blog. 12 posts altogether, in words and paintings, which you can see here if you are interested.

We took a plane from Larnaca  to Heraklion with the Cypriot flight company “Cyprus Airways”, the national airline company founded in 1947. No wonder they lasted so long: great compliments to them, one does feel welcome and spoiled on board! We landed about one hour later in Heraklion, it was the second time in my life that I was on Greek soil, but the first time was a very long time ago,  and I really was very excited. For those who don’t know exactly where Crete is and are too lazy or busy to google themselves, here it is

Crete – Google Map

Our first contact with a Greek person was the guy from whom we rented the car, and he was very pleasant, a good start! As I asked him what was the speed limit in Crete, he answered with a smile:

“About 100…”

Wonderful relaxing and refreshing “about”!

We had planned to stay about 4 days around Heraklion and booked a lovely family hotel in Aghia Pelagia, a little sea town by the beach about 20 kilometres west of Heraklion.  As we would often experience on this Cretan holiday, we were the first guests of the season. They all said that it was because Easter was late this year and the season had not started yet, but even later on, in the middle of Easter, we didn’t notice big changes… the economic crisis probably!

Agia Pelagia in Crete – Google map

We spent the first day wandering around Heraklion, and although I am normally not a fan of big towns, I just loved that one!. The atmosphere there was incredibly lively, vibrant even. Full of happy looking people everywhere and certainly no signs of economic crisis depression!!! The reason why it was so vibrant was probably the crisis itself, I suppose many of the people filling the cafes were jobless.. One of the first things I saw in Heraklion, as we were walking towards the harbour, was a window with some kind of “sculpture” meant to convey the crisis. I did a fast sketch, as I found it very funny

The Economic Crisis in Crete – travel sketch by Miki

The “Tyred” written on the car is from me though, I couldn’t resist the play on words!

The harbour, what they call a “Venetian harbour”, was really very beautiful and of course I enjoyed doing some sketches there, like the one above. If you search for it, you will find enough info about it, stuff like

“… In the Venetian harbour of Heraklion stands the fortress of Koules. Here begins the long mole of the new harbour. The mole is a favourite spot for a stroll, especially on warm summer evenings, when the sea breeze offers some relief from the heat. The people of Heraklion jokingly call the mole “Bypass Avenue”, as many of those walking along the long mole are heart bypass patients taking the constitutional recommended by their doctor. All along the mole you will see amateur fishermen waiting patiently for a bite, both day and night. In the middle of the mole is a canteen selling soft drinks, ice cream and fast food. The Venetian harbour also contains the Venetian Arsenals or shipyards, where ships were repaired…”

Heraklion 01 – watercolour and ink travel sketch by Miki

And indeed that first day we did a lot for the health of our heart, walking many kilometres on the mole and in the town. It was simply exhausting, and certainly not easy to find the energy to make some sketches. But I was a brave girl and made some efforts, as you can see

Heraklion 01 – watercolour and ink travel sketch by Miki

And in the middle of this marathon, we had of course our beloved and sacred coffee break, in a wonderful cafe by the yacht harbour.  As we were in Cyprus, at least at the end of the trip, I had started a series featuring our coffee breaks. I love mugs, and I love painting them, and I find interesting the different ways how a milk coffee gets served, depending on where one is in the world. And I wanted to share it by painting them. Here is the first from Crete.

If you can’t afford to go to Crete, but want to be there somehow, simply go to my online gallery and buy some prints! They are available directly online as Giclee print in many different dimensions, on paper or canvas, and also as greeting cards. Just click on the widgets below to access my FAA Gallery

Miki de Goodaboom is alive!

 Some days ago I explained my temporary disappearance from “Infinity + Some +2″ due to time spent working on my new artists website. It is more or less ready now, and ‘live’. The address is

www.mikidegoodaboom.com

http://www.mikidegoodaboom.com

It is a simple site, where I show a selection of my work of course, but also tell you a little bit about myself, my art and they way I get inspired and paint.

Attached to it is a diary in which I will probably tell you regularly about what is going on, using it as a kind of extended Twitter… but well, we will see see how quickly my good intentions vanish!

Le Tour de France in Art

So, Le Tour has started again, and I hope to be able to follow it from the beginning to the end this year. Last year I saw the first 10 stages, and then we went away to the Czech Republic. But before I left I had had time to start an artwork series called “Le Tour de France” -very original, isn’t it?  – . which I partly presented in this blog in different posts. This series has been so far extremely popular, the most  among them having been

Le Tour de France 03 – by Miki

Here is one more from the series, more abstract perhaps, but full of recognisable cycling movement!

Le Tour de France 10 – by Miki

I have recently sold in the USA following original painting in acrylics, “Breaking Away”, but if you are interested prints are still available

Breaking away – by Miki

And also I though that a detail of that painting might very interesting standing for itself. I personally like it a lot.

Breaking away 02 – by Miki

Anyway, all my Tour de France paintings are  available directly online as Giclee print in many different dimensions, on paper or canvas, and also as greeting cards. Just click on the widgets below to access my FAA Gallery