Moroccan Market 04 - by Miki

I won’t have time to write many words today, we are about to hit the road again and I must pack.

So, here are some more scenes of our wanderings through the Moroccan markets. The donkeys are the main “vehicles” there, they are chiefly the ones which carry the sellers, the buyers and the goods to the markets, and back. Sometimes the poor things must go dozens of miles to reach the market, fully loaded with tons of people and stuff. They are gone the whole day, leaving at dawn and returning in the night. And this, just to make a few dinars. This is a life one can hardly imagine…

Moroccan Market 05 - by Miki

And of course, as with cars and trucks, when the donkeys are unloaded, they need to get out of the way, so in these markets there is donkeys parking… the first time we saw one, we thought all these donkeys were for sale, but we were soon told otherwise!

Moroccan Market 06 - by Miki

So, as I said, we are about to leave. Destination: Algarve, Portugal. First Kevin will rock for the BMW German bikers, and after the gig, we will go. This is surely the best way to get his adrenaline down after the gig! But don’t think twice, this is not a pleasure trip. This is serious stuff. Two of our (Derby County) football Academy lads, Mason Bennett and Will Hughes have been named in the England Under-17 squad for the Algarve Tournament in the first week of February. England will face Portugal on February 2, Holland on February 4 and France two days later. Being huge fans of these two boys and expecting a great deal from them (no pressure of course    ) we have decided to go and support them live, attending all three games. Last time I went to a football match, as far as I can remember, was about 30 years ago,when I lived in Goettingen, Germany, where I saw my adopted home team team playing against Schalke.

Needless to say I am quite excited about this trip!

I hope I will find some time to sketch between the games, as Portugal is one of my favourite sketching motifs! But my hands will be probably shaking from fear and excitement, so involved I have become in Derby football.  And these two lads, they are our future (again: no pressure!)

But back to business, even if it is not as serious as footie, by far! (The legendary Liverpool Manager Bill Shankly was famously quoted as saying “Football is not a matter of life and death – it is far more important than that”!) The paintings above 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 store

And more generally you can see all the stuff I paint by going to my gallery “Miki’s Enchanted World”. Just click -gently!- on my face.

Moroccan Market 01 - by Miki

As promised in my last post “Trip to Morocco 01″, I have created some more watercolour paintings from Morocco, focussing on the Moroccan markets. The markets are I think what most amazed me there, probably even more than the tourist attractions such as the Medinas of Marrakesh and Essaouira.

In the painting above, there is a woman sitting by the side of the steps, one of the rare women I saw in these markets. But I was told by a local that the women do go to the markets, just very early in the morning, while we are still sleeping, dreaming of our breakfast… They know exactly what they want and  do their shopping very quickly. For the men, however, it seems to be more of a social event . I also got the impression that the men buy and sell all kinds of tat, just for the sake of it! It reminded me of my boyfriends and brothers when they were small, they just spent their time swapping whatever they had!

Like these guys in the painting below… no idea what that lively old man eagerly stepping across on the white board was expecting to buy from the seller sat on the ground… I personally saw only little bits of wood there!

Moroccan Market 02 - by Miki

I’m wondering also what the two guys were looking so fascinated by in the little bucket… some worms probably (!) … but I did not dare to go nearer to check… I just took a photo and escaped before I got shouted at!

Moroccan Market 03 - by Miki

The Moroccan Market 03 is in fact part of my series “My dear old people”, and is called (“Together Old in Morocco 01″), featuring old people from around the world, in their daily life, lonely or together. A series very dear to my heart, as I have a very sweet spot for all people. Here is another one

Together Old in Morocco 02 - by Miki

These two old guys looked so sweet!!!!! Portraits in watercolour is not so easy, and I have hardly painted any in my life, being more used to portraying in pastel and coloured pencils.  But well, it will do for now. It would be worth a real portrait though, focussing on the faces… one day maybe! As we say in Spain “Manana!”, meaning “probably never!”

So, enough with Moroccan markets for today, it’s time to go home and eat now! 

These 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 store

And more generally you can see all the stuff I paint by going to my gallery “Miki’s Enchanted World”. Just click -gently!- on my face.

Old and Lonely in Morocco 01 - by Miki

You know, every year it is the same thing. Christmas comes and one has to spend these special days with the family. Well, I love to spend time with my family, and especially with my parents, but somehow, it is always the same procedure. To be more precise: lots of great food, for hours and hours and hours! But now and then I have a craving for another kind of food, not so much for a feast for the tummy but a feast for my eyes! I am definitely not one of these people who hate Christmas, on the contrary: I love it! As I was a child, Christmas was fantastic, our Papa Noel was doing a great job, and these moments marked me for life. So, this year -well, last year, 2011- we decided to have a very special Christmas, and coming back to celebrate just in time with the parents. We booked a ten day trip to Morocco. I had always wanted to go there, and especially to paint it. But well, I knew that 10 days were not enough, I do need more time and more room and comfort to paint, more than I can get travelling from hotel to hotel in a little rented car. But this trip was a test, I wanted to see if I like Morocco, and if yes, we would come back for a much longer time with our Boomobile (our motorhome, my atelier on wheels). Morocco is just across the Gibraltar channel from us, and we both, and the Boomobile, we always love a go on a ferry!

Anyway, as expected, we loved Morocco! But since we came back one month ago, I was caught in a whirl of other artistic activities connected to my profession (still am!) and I had no time to make some paintings, based on the photos I took there. I just published photos from the trip in my FAA gallery, for me, the lazy way to make art

But now, eventually,  I have taken time again, and grasped my brushes. I guess I won’t do many though, painting from photos is not really my thing!

The first painting is of a lonely old man we saw in Ait-Ourir, not far from Marrakesh. A perfect motif for my series “My dear Old People”, featuring old people from around the world, alone or together. I don’t know if I did him justice, but he was so BEAUTIFUL! I am not sure what he was doing sitting there… simply resting perhaps.. or begging.. well, In Morocco at some point you stop asking yourself what people are doing sitting or laying on the ground, they do it everywhere and at any time of the day and night, probably waiting to see what the Gods will do with them next… Insh’allah!…

Street Scene in Morocco - by Miki

This second painting is a scene from a market in a town where we stopped, on our way from Essaouira to Marrakesh. Certainly one of the most fascinating markets I have ever been too.. and I swear, we were the only tourists there! Which did not make my job as a photographer very easy, as I would have needed to be discreet. But I was one of the rare women there, with a baseball cap on my head instead of a veil, and my companion was an English Rocker with crazy long hair… needless to say we had hordes of children following us all around the market! And the adults looked at us as if we came from Mars!!!! Although really, creatures from Mars don’t look at all like us, at least their skin colour doesn’t, especially not when our skin had a lovely golden tan from the sunny days in Essaouira….  . I am still amazed that I survived that market, having often been spat at in other places in Morocco, even threatened with stones, when I was taking some photos…

These 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 store

And more generally you can see all the stuff I paint by going to my gallery “Miki’s Enchanted World”. Just click -gently!- on my face.

My Home on Planet Goodaboom - by Miki

Sometimes, when I have nothing better to do, or just lack an energy to start a new painting, I revisit some of my immense drawers where hundreds of my past paintings are stocked. These are paintings from a time -not long ago really-  when I was not bothered with any kind of digitalisation and publication.  Painting is fab, but everything involved in the process of having them published on the net is awfully boring and time taking. In fact quite practical that I have these uncreative moments sometimes, at least I can do the boring job meanwhile!

Anyway, some days ago, I found per accident, not in a drawer but in  a big travel folder, loads of watercolours paintings, which I did not even remembered.  They are scenes from around the place where I live with my English Rocker: Planet Goodaboom! On that Planet everything is wild, and passionate, and loving: the Rocker, the skies, the trees, the houses, the sea, the mountains, me, etc…

You can see above our home on Planet Goodaboom. Well, it was like that as we started here and I painted it. It is a little bit bigger now, having gradually added some more rooms to be able to stock all the drawers full of paintings and all the guitars. But it is still an enchanting home, cosy and cut from the rest of the world, a love island, kind of…

A Village on Planet Goodaboom - by Miki

And this is a village nearby, with houses like piles of sugar cubes behind curtains of blossoms…

Well, I hope you love my Planet. If you love it so much that you want to have it on your walls, it is 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 store

And more generally you can see all the stuff I paint by going to my gallery “Miki’s Enchanted World”. Just click -gently!- on my face.

Roller Scating 01 - by Miki

Somebody in Italy, after having seen my ice skating paintings, asked me if I could do some artworks featuring artistic roller skating. Quite embarrassing really: to be honest I had no idea that such a sport even exists!

So I went to Youtube and had a look what it is about. Well, it looks to me the same as artistic ice skating, apart that they stay on rollers instead of ice skates and skate on normal ground instead of ice. I hope I am not offending my new Italian friend saying that! Anybody who knows better is very welcome to teach me about other differences! Having been myself  a fanatic roller skater in my childhood, I would be happy to learn more. I was not an artistic skater though, I rather used to skate down steps and steep roads at high speed until I fell… this was my only aim, far from any art!

Anyway I inspired from beautiful scenes I saw on some videos and made 2 first artworks.

Roller Skating 02 - by Miki

These 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 store

And more generally you can see all the stuff I paint by going to my gallery “Miki’s Enchanted World”. Just click on my face!

Figure skating 01 - by Miki

I am still on my sports arts journey, focussing on winter sports for the moment. And in order to paint winter themes I have to set my mind to a winter mood, to feel the cold and somehow romantic atmosphere. Well, we are in the middle of October, so I would say it is quite sensible to think about winter already. There was a time in my life -my Germany time-, when the winter could have started soon, And anyway, especially when I was living in Freiburg,  Switzerland being just around the corner, the snow was never very far away. But where I live now, in Andalusia, in the middle of the Almeria desert, it is not easy to think winter thoughts… although some might say,  I just need to stretch my mind to the Sierra Nevada, which is also not so far away…

Anyway, one of my favourite winter sports disciplines is figure skating on ice .I guess I will spend some time on this subject. I have started the series featuring couples skating, as it is what I most enjoy. I love the basic contrast between man and woman but still in search of unity and , the matching gear they put on are a delight for my eyes, In fact they all generally look like the perfect couples. Although I must say that some couples are veering away from that aesthetic perfection, typically when the guy is immense and the girl tiny, probably for the sake of easing the carrying and throwing. And call me old-fashioned, or  not liberated, but I don’t like it either when the girl looks like the guy , and inversely… In couples skating I especially love the increased tension through the double possibility of failure and the search for harmony and coordination. These guys really have many parameters to master to give a good show and achieve a high ranking.. what a performance really!

Now some words about painting figure skating. It is not as easy as I thought, perhaps because it is closer to dancing than to traditional sport, especially through the elegance and the general body attitudes in search of drama or fake smiles!  I would say it is not easy to escape the danger of kitsch, or at least not to cross the borderline between art and kitsch. When I think about it, I don’t understand why I love figure skating so much. Of course I love dancing, I love skating, but generally I don’t like mixing tastes.. it is like when we eat waffles here: Kevin loves to put chocolate AND strawberry syrup on them, and I can’t stand it, both tastes killing each other: what a sin! Or like in painting, mix too many colours and you get an ugly grey. I know, I am digressing here, figure skating is not at all like that, and yet, as I stated painting it, I felt the danger very clearly….

I won’t say anything about the results. As I always state: it is not up to me to judge my work.

I will just say one thing: I will persevere!

These 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 store

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

Turre 01 - by Miki

In my last post presenting you places where I have been travelling and sketching -in that case Sorbas- I mentioned that I had hardly painted Turre, where I actually live in Andalusia, Spain. It is not quite true. I found some sketches featuring Turre, although the town is more in the background, as a white silhouette.  Well, better than nothing actually, especially because Turre in silhouette is very nice,!. It is anyway nice to see where the town is situated, between the mountains and the sea.

We are 4 kilometres away from the Mediterranean sea, and at the foot of the Cabrera mountain range. “It is built along the “Rio Aguas”, which by the way means “The River Waters”.  Typical Spanish: the only waters we see in that river is when we have some rare torrential rains, but most of the time the only things that flow along it are herds of goats and sheep wandering around! Very lovely though… 

The sketch below was painted on our way to Sorbas, Turre being the white townscape in the background.

Like many of my travel sketches from that period (2007-2008), it is done in ink and pastel chalk. But I have also a watercolour interpretation of that scenery, Very different as you can see, but still the same place. Amazing in fact how the technique and the colours can give a totally different impression of a place!

Dawn in Turre - by Miki

And concerning watercolour, I also found  the following one. I can’t remember having painted it, neither where nor when. But on the painting itself, by the signature,  is written 2008, and behind I wrote “Turre”. So it is certainly some place I saw here, probably a lonely house somewhere at the outskirts of Turre. I quite like the painting, although it is perhaps not really representative of Spanish scenery. But does that really matter? Not to me!

And finally a piece called, “Dollhouse in turre”, inspired by a beautiful house very close to Turre, and a little girl whom I saw sitting there on the doorstep one day.

Doll House in Turre - by Miki

That painting was by the way, chosen for the cover of the August edition of our wonderful local magazine, “The Sentinella”. Always a big honour to be featured there! By the way The Sentinella appears every month as a printed edition (great quality by the way, worth collecting!), but also online.  Also because my partner, the great musician, artist and ranter  KEV MOORE,  is featured there every month, being the magazine cartoonist, and also having a regular column called “Want some Moore?”, where he sounds off about everything that gets on his nerves, and believe me, that’s a lot!

These 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 store

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

Speed Skating 01 - by Miki

The first time I really enjoyed Ice speed skating was last year, as we were touring the Southern States of America. The Olympic Winter games in Vancouver were just happening, and sometimes in the hotels, when it was too cold to go out (we are used to warmth all around the year living  in our Andalusian desert…. the temperatures over there were quite a shock!)  we switched the TV on and followed the games. We were especially captivated by the Ice speed skating disciplines,  probably because of the whole theatre surrounding the USA’s charismatic figure answering to the fabulous name of Apolo Ohno.  Apolo by the way, is the guy leading the pack on the painting above, and also on the painting below… well, I didn’t  really try to reach an exact similarity in the facial features,, as these are not meant to be portrait paintings, but really speed skating paintings.

Ice Speed Skating 02 - by Miki

Sorry for the exclusivity,  but he is, through his face and whole body attitude a wonderful painting motif! And speed skating itself is a perfect sports motif for my new technique, combining much movement and bright colours.

For those who want to know more about Apolo, here is the beginning of the Wikipedia entry:

“… Apolo Anton Ohno (pronounced /əˈpɒloʊ ˈæntɒn ˈoʊnoʊ/; born May 22, 1982) is an American short track speed skating competitor and an eight-time medalist (two gold, two silver, four bronze) in the Winter Olympics. He is the most decorated American Winter Olympic athlete of all time.

Raised by his father, Ohno began training full-time in 1996. He has been the face of short track in the United States since winning his medals at the 2002 Winter Olympics.^[3][4] At the age of 14, he became the youngest U.S. national champion in 1997 and was the reigning champion from 2001–2009, winning the title a total of 12 times.^[5][6] In December 1999, he became the youngest skater to win a World Cup event title, and became the first American to win a World Cup overall title in 2001, which he won again in 2003 and 2005.^[6][7] He won his first overall World Championship title at the 2008 championships… “

These 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 store

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

Steve Jobs Grave

Along with millions of people around the world, I am mourning…

Right now I am writing these words on my wonderful  IMac…

For the last 20 years my computer life has been spinning around the Apple…

Steve Jobs was even born the same year as me…

Yes, I am so sad….

Sorbas 02 - by Miki

I have presented loads of travel sketches from many different countries in this blog , but if I remember well, I never published paintings from the town where I live (Turre) and the surrounding area here. I love to draw landscapes and townscapes, but as usual, although we live in a lovely little town with spectacular mountains and sea views, I have hardly ever painted it. But I did a few artworks featuring of some the neighbouring places.

Today I will bring you to Sorbas, a typical Spanish little town about 20 kilometres south of us,  a bit further away from the sea

Unfortunately I don’t remember much about the place, except that there were plenty of painting motifs. I remember though that we were there on a market day, but it was quite near the end and there was only some small stalls left on the town square, and hardly anybody around. I still found the motif very nice and painted it on the sketch above, choosing some pale yellow light to increase the nostalgic atmosphere. In fact it is very representative of many rural Spanish towns which have been quite deserted by the youth. Although judging by the numbers mentioned in Wikipedia, the population has hardly changed in the last 10 years, about 2800 people. Well, perhaps it was deserted before…

The main part of the  town is built on a hill, hanging houses always being a very attractive motif for me. On the sketch below you can see Sorbas, the white townscape in the background, viewed from the main street leading to it

I seem to remember that I did more sketches that day, but I can’t find them any more. I need to go back there one day and paint again. It shouldn’t be a problem considering the distance, but as always, “close to home” seems so unreachable. I travel thousands and thousands of kilometres to see and paint beautiful places, forgetting the jewels we have here… it is a little bit like the story of Don Quijote and his Dulcinea, isn’t it ?

All sketches presented here have been painted on the site, in ink and pastel chalk.

These 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 store

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