The Italian Job 00

Just back from my sketching trip to Italy, mainly focussed on Tuscany, 7 weeks altogether in our box on wheels (The Boomobile, our motorhome), started in Turre (our home in the north of Andalusia, Spain) on the 29th of march 2011. Yesterday afternoon, 15th of May, we arrived safely home after a 5000 kilometres journey through Spain, France and Italy. Some days before, in fact the day of my birthday, we had been told about the earthquake in Lorca (located about 70 kilometres from Turre) a big shock, having to travel through Lorca quite often. Not exactly the kind of birthday present I wished! Anyway, we were happy to find all our paintings and posters still hanging on the walls, and our beloved mugs on their shelves! Living so close to Lorca, it could have been much worse…

In Italy I sketched a lot -well, this of course was the aim of the trip- although I must say that I could not sketch outdoors on the site as much as I wanted: much too many people around, no chance to get the peace and concentration I needed. Also I had the intention to paint more with gouache than with watercolour this time, but I soon noticed that it is much too complicated to deal with all the tubes and palettes and brushes, much too messy too for the motorhome. So very soon I went back to my usual technique in watercolour and ink. I did what I could, loads of the sketches having been done simply from memory some hours after having been on the site, or done from inside our Boomobile looking out of the window and imagining what I could not really see….. This might have the advantage of rendering all these well-know places in a more personal way.

I had been in Italy before, a long long time ago, when painting was not my main activity. It is very different to visit a country with the eyes of an artist, and also in company of the man one loves. Being shared, all the impressions and feelings are much deeper, intensified. Also, in this special case of Italy, there was an additional strong emotional component as our artist friend from the USA, Pamela Allegretto-Franz, of Italian origin, had helped me to choose the travel route. We followed step by step her advice, went to most of the places she had recommended to us. It was very emotional to think that she had been there before herself, especially because we have never met in person! At least we can say now that we have been at exactly the same spots, just not at the same time. Being such dear friends as we are, this alone means a lot! 

Now I guess I will spend the next few months revisiting Italy,  working on all these sketches and painting material, of course, publishing it, in the form of paintings, sketches and blog posts. Suddenly the net will be infected with Miki’s Italy stuff, but I hope some people will find pleasure in them, and perhaps be reminded of their own holidays in that marvellous country, or their native country, or their family history.

First blog post with first Italy sketches coming soon… fasten your seatbelts please!  

Miki sketching in Italy

Photo taken by Kev Moore as I started sketching, somewhere between Rapallo and Portofino… judging by the white paper, I hadn’t done much yet! 

And please take a moment to admire my wonderful; bag, bought in the Sierra Nevada last year to carry my sketching material, , and used in Italy for the first time! So far it had been used as a model for the following still life

Miki's art bag

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”

Travelscapers – Around The World in Arty Days

I don’t know how it is with you, but me, I have so many travel plans and dreams in my head that 10 lives would not be enough to fulfil them! My dreams have always been for example, to go to Siberia, China, India, Peru, The Moon… I will certainly do what I can to realise some of them, but for many obvious reasons, not all will be possible. But when one can’t really travel, there is a way to visit places without spending too much money or time, and it is ART. I do love to look at beautiful photos from far away countries, and of course, even more than photos, I adore  paintings featuring the beauty of all the places and people in our world.

This is why, Adrian Durham and me have started a new project, called Travelscapers. Our aim is to exhibit on our platform as many paintings from around the world (scapes, towns,  nature, people, folklore) as possible, the challenge being to gradually cover the globe with paintings, according to the motto:

“”Around the world in Arty days”

Travelscapers.com is a site for artists and art lovers, run by artists. I would love to invite 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. And anyway, I know from my own experience that there is an incredible amount of people around the world who search for paintings from the places where they live, where they have been on holiday, or from where they dream of. Travelscapers will become THE place where they will go, as soon as we have a very representative amount of paintings from around the world.

If you want to join us in travelscapers.com, exhibiting your paintings and travel sketches of places there, leave a comment here, or contact me at

miki@goodaboom.com

or simply go to travelscapers and register!

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

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!

El Rocio – 2 – (Travel Sketches Spain 2009)

Some more sketches from El Rocio.

In case you haven;t recognised the animals? they are flamingos. Unforyunately they were quite far away from the place where I was sketching, and I ccould only give an impression of them within the water landscape…

Recalculating the Route

I am participating again in a contest organised by the Infectious people. They are making skins for laptops, ipods, iphones, etc, and are regularly organising competitions open to all artists. We are invited  to submit works with special themes. 2 weeks ago I participated in

“I love blogging”

and this time to “Big Cities”.

I have just submitted 2 works, one about Paris (noblesse oblige), and one about Lisbon.

The real aim is to develop a skin for the laptops, something which “rocks” – but they also want us to make an appropriate presentation work of the laptop with the skin. This is perhaps the part I most enjoy in the story!  Well here I did enjoy imagining Vasco de Gama sitting at my skinned  laptop and recalculating his route…

The laptop skin – the work I have entered in the competition – is the following

This work is a combination of several sketches I did last summer in Lisbon. I literally fell in love with that city, I loved the bridge, the discoverers monument, the trams (no, in Lisbon the trams don’t run on water.,,) , the old people striding the streets, the black umbrellas against the sun and the flags everywhere!

I have no idea as to whether this design will be accepted as an entry in the contest, but I don’t really care:

FOR ME THIS IS LISBON AND I LOVE IT!

Portugal in the Box – #34

Wednesday 2nd July 2008

Barco de Alva

It is a little bit scary to write the date every day, every day is one day later, one day closer to the end of the trip. When I go away like that I always have the problem to come back, in fact I think I would prefer to live on the road, always… I always had a gypsy soul, always dreamed of spending my life on the roads and oceans of the world…
It is already July, only about 10 days are left now until we must go back… Kevin has a gig on the 19th in Germany, and must fly to England before, and we must go back to Turre, then to Albir… then a big working time will start, full of commitments… I am not so keen about it. Once you have tasted freedom , almost total freedom like we have on these trips, it is very hard to come back to normal life… I experienced something like that, even stronger, as I spent many weeks with my brother on a sailing boat. There, the rules of society are even weaker, time and space and life in the spacetime really take on another dimension…

Anyway, still about 10 days to go and Kevin tries to comfort me, saying that it is as much as some people have for their entire vacation! Yes, of course, but I am not the kind of person who finds comfort in the misery of the people having a worse life than me. Generally, that kind of wisdom is a passive one, it never helps solve the problems which hurt your life, it just helps you to survive them.

We have decided to stay in Barco de Alva until the end of the Powerboat competition, which will take place this weekend. We will perhaps make some day excursions around the area, but generally we will try to defend our place by the water and above all by the electric point! I guess at the weekend I will concentrate my drawing on the powerboats and the people around, it is surely a beautiful theme. But difficult. This morning, while Kevin was helping the national English team to pull their boats into the water to make some tests (they had a motor blow up at the last competiton in Lisbon 10 days ago), I tried to make some sketches. The first one was a total catastrophe. The proportions and shapes were totally wrong, and after the second sketch, which was a little bit better, I realised that I had to think in another way about the powerboats: much more in terms of  aeroplanes than of boats! This would perhaps help me to draw them better. I hope I can improve the sketches this weekend, as I really find these boats very aesthetic. Kevin had a long conversation with the oldest guy of the team, he will surely write about it in his own entry in Cafe Crem.
But somehow it is so funny again: although we really are in the middle of nowhere here, and we haven´t seen a tourist for a long time, we have managed to find a place where an international competition takes place. This kind of situation seems to have followed us all over the trip, from the very first beginning!

In the afternoon we had a nice bike ride to an old railway station, out of service now. How sad, somehow! It was a beautiful one, a big one, with a lot of railway stuff  I never saw before in my life:
„How can that be, you are the daughter of a railway engineer!”
said Kevin, as I told him I had never seen a changing turntable before. Well, I will have to ask my father how that can be!
Again we had a bike ride to Spain, across a bridge over the Rio Aguera this time, up a hill.  We still could feel in our legs the effects of the ride two days ago, in fact each turn of the pedal was a nightmare, up the hill or not!

I spent the rest of the day finishing some sketches with watercolour, and watching the whole river traffic with the Douro Cruisers. Quite fascinating… we are trying to find out how many of these boats are cruising the Douro, and until now we have spotted 5 different ones. There is first the Royal Family, on Portuguese flag, consisting of the 3 boats:
- „The Douro Queen”, the biggest and most modern and noisiest one, which has her motor always on and spoils the sensitivity of my ears
- „The Douro Prince”, the most insignificant and oldest looking one,  in fact no character at all…
- „The Douro Princess”, the most beautiful and most romantic one…
I wonder if they have a king too,…
Then we saw the „Vasco de Gama” with a French flag and registered in Strasbourg, and another one, from which I don´t remember the name… Something with Magellan I think. By the way I don´t remember where this guy came from… France?

We are still waiting for all the traffic from the powerboats competition to turn up and chase us from our wonderful powerplace by the river… until now it is only the English team here, although we saw two French vans in the late afternoon, obviously from the French team but without a boat, who parked for a while close to us and looked at us ferociously…
Who will dare to tell us to bugger off???

Portugal in the Box – #33

Tuesday 1st July 2008

Miranda do Douro – Mogadouro – Barco de Alva

„… 2 artists (painters) are living in two parallel, but intertwined spaces. They never can see each other, but everything they do is interacting at each point of their timespaces, in a way which is bad for the Art and consequently for the Universe. One of them must die. A comittee has been formed to decide which one should die, and it should be the worst painter. I have been chosen to decide who is the better artist, but I refuse to do it, because one of them is a former friend of mine, a painter-mathematician, and I could not be objective…“

I think we had to suffer both from the consequences of our exhausting bike ride yesterday, as we were both quite lethargic today, without any energy, somehow. Well, I was in especially bad form, the main reason being though, that I had a bad hay fever attack and this  usually puts me out of function.
We spent the first part of the day preparing to depart from the campsite, and headed then towards Mogadouro, a little town where I wanted to make a stop to have lunch, to look for an internet connection and to make some sketches.  We found the town after a nice drive on nice roads, but there we could not find any internet, and I was too tired to walk to the interesting parts where I could have drawn. The result being that we had only a lunch, and I even had a long siesta after that.
I had planned to spend the night in another little very ancient town not far from the river. We drove across wonderful landscapes of vineyards on stepped  hills by the river Douro. I started wondering if the wine here is as good as the famous „Ribeira de Duero“ in Spain, (Duero being the same river as the Douro, just called differently), and my brain went on asking itself what exactly makes a wine how it is, surely not only the river bank on which it grows! I would be curious to taste the wine here, unfortunately Kevin does not like wine. The best thing will be to bring some nice bottles to my parents and to let them invite me to dinner! Anyway, until now I could not find any adequate present for them, so I guess this would be a great idea.
As we finally  arrived in the town I had chosen for the night, we did not find it so appealing at the first glance and we decided to go on. I am not sure if it was the right decision, because we were both in a sort of negative, apathetic mood, still very tired, and nothing seems really good enough for us at that time. I hate it when I am like that, but in fact more than anything I hate my hay fever. I mentioned it already some days ago, but it made my life hell as I was living in Germany, from April until October, every year…

But at the end I must say that a big surprise was awaiting us, which could make us think that all that bad mood and laziness had a good reason. We arrived at this place, called Barco de Alva, which does not even exist on my map, and it turned to be like Christmas. First of all it is a wonderful place, the place where the Douro leaves the border, makes a 90 degrees turnd and heads towards Porto, where it joins the sea. The landscape looks fantastic, the little town has it charms too. But that is not all. This place seems to be an embarkation point for river cruisers, and we are parked right now in front of the „Douro Princess“, which, we suppose, brings her passengers –most of them English and American there and back to Porto (or the contrary). I love to look at boats, I can do it for hours and hours without being bored, even if they don´t move, my fantasy does the trip…
But it is still not all. As we arrived we noticed already 4 English motorhomes parked, with enormous tents mounted and attached to the motorhomes, and under each tent was a powerboat, and men working on them with a lot of tools and machines. I kind of got the feeling that there was power there, soemwhere. I really could smell it.And suddenly we saw it,  triple plugs were installed in the area everywhere.
Kevin went to one of the tents and asked what was going on. They told him that there was an international competition of powerboats next weekend, on Saturday the qualifications, on Sunday the final. The guys told Kevin that there would be about 50 boats participating, and that we perhaps could get away with staying here for the night, but then wed better leave. And yes, there was power everywhere, of course!
What a joy, really! If you have never lived on a sailing boat or a motorhome, you cannot know how exciting and freeing it is to get a possibility to be connected to mains power. This is the main reason why we sometimes spend time in campsites. But when the power is suddenly there, out of nowhere, and free, it is really like Christmas! And believe me, to plug the motorhome in there into these cute little sockets, was the same as to plug ourselves in: the energy was suddenly back, full power!
So I went sketching at once, starting with the Princess Douro, but my God, these things are so difficult to draw! I think I will try it again tomorrow… I made some other sketches, of simpler boats, and one of the village.
By the way, the behaviour of the village inhabitants was very different from what I had experienced in Portugal until now. As they saw me, they walked rapidly towards me, came very close, and walked then behind my back, stood there for a while totally silent and then went away. I found it very unpleasant, almost scary…

We spent a long part of the evening having a drink outside, on a bench, in front of the extraordinarily illuminated bridge and the Douro Princess. It was simply wonderful. We totally changed our plans, and decided to be here at the weekend for the competition, I never attended something like that, had never ever seen such powerboats before. We don´t know yet how we will manage it, but I think we will have 2 or 3 days around the area, and then come back for the competition. I doubt we will find any place to park the motorhome then, but well, we could park it anywhere and then ride here with the bikes…

By the way we have started a new American TV series, House M.D. Unfortunately without English subtitles and it is hard for me to understand. Oh, and that reminds me that I have a great anecdote to tell about House M.D., but this will be for another day…