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

Mertola (Travel Sketches Portugal 2009)

Mertola, not very far away from our last stop Alcoutim, on the way up towards North (which we will never reach, but this is another story for the next entry). In fact we were there only in the hope to find somewhere a place which would sell us a battery for the motor home cell,  but what we found was a lot of motives for me and no battery, of course  Here for the first time I felt quite down, we had no time to stay as we really needed to solve the motor home problem and there were no camp-sites around where we could have spent a night. I saw motives to sketch everywhere, but not simple ones, quite complicated architectures and I would have needed quite a lot of time to do them. Even fast sketches need some care, even from me who generally does not care so much about accuracy, geometry, realism, etc…

Kevin calmed me down, telling me that we could stay one hour, and we could then come back when we would have solved the motorhome problem. And while he went and visited alone the great monuments, I sketched around with a nervous hand, terrified not to have enough time to at least fix a little bit of the surrounding beauty. And secretly knowing that we wouldn’t come back, at least not so soon,…

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Alcoudim – 3 – (Travel Sketches Portugal 2009)

I have been asked in a comment of my last entry showing some other similar travel sketches from Alcoutim, if these works were digital paintings. The answer is NO. They are the result of a quite complicated technique which I developed last year for my series The Fantascapes. A technique both involving classical art (water colour and ink) and Digital Art. I won’t go into the “fabrication details”, you know, in this matter I am like cooks with their recipes…

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The church here appears on other sketches from Alcoutim, but with a red brown steeple. I often  put the colours afterwards (I always do the ink sketches in situ), and in this case I could not remember the colour of the steeple, grey or brown? Anyway the colours are, like always, quite “untrue”, I suppose…but I can’t do anything against it, my brushes and not me always choose the colours…  

Alcoudim – 2 – (Travel Sketches Portugal 2009)

Back to “real” work now, after an evasion in the Music world and ma Fantasy world…

Some works on commission are waiting , not the easiest part of my job, really! I mean psychologically it is not easy, it means much less freedom in the realisation and above all the necessity to succeed. But well, it must be done!

This is why I wnet back to work on my last travel sketches of Spain/Portugal, specifically to Alcoutim (see here the first post about it, with some sketches)by the Spanish border  I have still a lot to there, and I would like to finish them before we start the next trip in the middle of september, although we actually have no idea if our initial plan to go to The Provence/France for one month will come true…

Castro Marim – 1 – (Travel Sketches Portugal 2009)

Like last year, our first stop in Portugal was in Castro Marim, a little town right by the border with Spain. We already enjoyed that place very much last time, and I wanted to come back as I had the feeling that I had much more to sketch here. We spent 2 days in Castro Marim and I really felt the same artistic enchantment as before.

Portugal in Acrylics

by Miki – Boat and Houses in Vila do Conde, Portugal

Acrylics on canvas, 70 x 70 cm

For the first time in my painter life, and to celebrate my new acrylics atelier, I reproduced in acrylics on canvas a sketch I had done last Summer in Portugal. I normally don’t fancy doing such works, I find “repetitions” or, to sound more sophisticated,  “interpretations in other techniques” quite boring and I really can’t overcome myself to do it.

This time I was myself quite curious to see how these funny sketches of dancing houses would look like on canvas. Also i have been asked many times for it, and in fact I los the opportubity of many sales because of my “lazyness”. Now I must admit that I  quite like the result. So much that I have even done a second one, and perhaps, if I can find the time (and above all the energy), I will do a whole series of them.

A Pint of Beer in Portugal

In case you are wondering what I am artistically doing right now, and to let you know that I am not only relying on the work I did about 25 years ago (Bubble Boy), just a short announcement here. You  remember perhaps that we both, Kev Moore and me, spent about 7 weeks in Portugal last Summer, a wonderful trip from the South to the North and down again… I tried to sketch every day, and in fact I managed  to do  quite a lot. As we came back, in the middle of July, I immediately started finishing the sketches and publishing them here on my blog and in Flickr. But well, we had so much to do then, fixing our house in Albir to put it for sale on the market, moving from Albir to Turre, installing and opening my new gallery here, some big exhibitions and commissions between, so I had to stop.

Well, on the 1st of January, I resolved to finish my Portugal sketches series and to go on publishing them. I just finished some which I made in Barca de Alva, where we  (accidentally) attended the Power Boats World Championship.  This one represents the beer stand on the day of the final…

If you want to see the whole series (about 160 sketches so far) simply go

here.

I read the news today, oh boy!

About one month ago I wrote an entry telling that I had been contacted by a newspaper from Costa Rica, asking me for the authorization to publish one of my Portugal sketches, “An Old Couple in Lisbon”, to celebrate the international day of the senior citizen.

Of course I agreed, and some days ago I received by mail some samples of the newspaper. I am extremely emotional about this event, and just wanted to share it wth you!

Greetings, from Me!

In my last post about The Labyrinth in my new gallery I told you about the  wonderful fine art greeting cards The Bay Attic created from my Bullfight paintings. You could even have a glance of them on one wall.

The Bay Attic has also created many different greeting cards from my Portugal sketches and from my Fantascapes.

All of them on high quality card, in square format, 15 x 15 cm, single-folded, blank inside for personal messages, and individually wrapped with matching envelope in cellophane.

In short: a great product!

The Bay Attic will present them in their programme at The Scottish Trade Fair in January 2009. I must say that I feel very excited about it!

As for me I will try to marketing them in Portugal, Spain and France…

wish me good luck!

PS: If there is anybody outside there who knows how I can find the right people to contact, please drop me a line.

Please visit my new website:

T O R O : Bull and Bullfightart

My Celebration Day of the Internet

The Internet is wonderful, I will never say it often enough! I know, it contains many traps and dangers, but for me, at least, it is simply great!

Yesterday I received the following mail:

“Dear Miki,

My name is …..  and I am volunteer for a free newspaper distributed in Costa Rica, Central America that has been created by and for the community with disability, senior citizens and the public in general.

For this months edition, we are celebrating the international day of the senior citizen on the 1st of October. We would like to ask permission to publish your fantastic artwork “Old couple in Lisbon Painting Portugal” to accompany our editorial for this months edition…”

I must say that I am extremely happy and proud that my painting has been chosen to celebrate this day. I have generally a very sweet heart for older people, they deeply move me, I don’t know why… perhaps because I had an intense relationship with both my grandmothers … and can’t stand the thought of them being alone and not cared for… and I hate people using their weakness to steal from and hurt them…

Anyway… It is a fantastic and exciting feeling to know that thanks to the internet,  my painting will be published in a newspaper in Costa Rica on this wonderful occasion of celebrating our senior citizens!

Here it is

I drew it from memory in Lisbon. No big ambition behind, just an impression. I was sitting in a tram heading down to the centre of the city and I saw them purposefully pounding the road, in the other direction. I was deeply touched by the scene, had 1000′s of feelings at the same time, from total sadness to total happiness. But I above all admired the way they seemed to lead their life with courage and determination, at this high age. and I was infinitely happy that they still did it together!!!

If only they knew that they will soon be famous in Costa Rica and probably in the whole world!