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…

*********

*******

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… 

********

********

********

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!

********

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…

********

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!

Serpa – 1 – (Travel Sketches Portugal 2009)

So, I have now started to work on the travel sketches from Serpa (Portugal), which was the last place we visited this summer (June/July 2009). In fact we wanted to go much farther, but our motor home problem was still not solved and I was extremely frustrated by this endless hunting after a cell battery and electricity. We still had 10 days planned for the holidays, until we had to head back to Spain, where Kevin had to take a plane to perform in a gig  in Bosnia in the middle of July.

At that point I was so down that I wanted to stop the trip and  go back home. But Kevin insisted that we shouldn’t shorten our holidays, for which we had waited so long and had been already  forced to shorten a lot. The only alternative which I accepted was to find a good camp site, and to stay there and relax until the end. By chance we found a great one, in “Serpa”. The main reason why we loved it is that it was in front of a sensational Olympic swimming pool, which would allow us to swim everyday our 1000 meters. The town Serpa, from what I saw at the first glance, was certainly beautiful enough to allow me to have motifs to sketch for one week, and the landscapes around were flat enough to have some relaxing bike rides. In short: the perfect place ! They even had, like almost everywhere in Portugal nowadays, a nice and free internet centre, where we could check our mails daily or do some internet work. Although I must say that to go on the internet was the last thing I fancied doing on holiday this year!

So, here are the first sketches from Serpa. I won’t show them all here, it could be boring for my visitors, but here is the link to my Flick account, where I publish them all, little by little. There, if you browse around my galleries, you will be also be able to see all my Portugal sketches, from last year too.

*********

*********

Cafe Sketches

We have been so busy wiht many things ove rthe last few months, there was hardly time to relax! But 2 days ago, on the way back from some stressing palec where we had to some dome formalities, we decoded to make a haly by our favourite cafe by the beach: it had been weeks since we were there! Luckily for me, who can’t cope very well with just sitting around without doing anyhting, I had a small  sketch book in the car and could sit there, at Masko, sketching people again. And what a pleasure: Great motives were there that day, and I just regret that I hadn’t more time. Here are some of the sketches I did.

By that woman reading the news, i was fascinated by her hands position, and the “delicateness” of the whole apparition…

especially the length of her neck, face and fingers…

Here I guess that the woamn was telling off her husband about eating too much…

forgetting to look at herself in a mirror…

Some couples really shouldn’t spend their lifes together… 

Moonbathing

As I said in my previous netry, I have been very busy lately in the real world…

One thing I simply forgot to mention is that I have been working for 2 or 3 weeks  together with an Australian poet, providing him with some paintings/images for a new poem book. It has started with 2 or 3 paintings , but has become a quite ambitious project in the meanwhile, and most of his poems should be illustrated with my artwork.

I am quite happy about it, above all because I love his poetry. I  feel deeply connected to it,  and many of my paintings seem to have been painted for them!

And, last but not least, I enjoy very much to work with him: the communication is very clear and straight forward, our brains seem to work the same way!Really not an insignificant detail when one thinks that we are both on one side of the earth and have to do everything per mail.

This is a piece I created for one of his poems called “The Tree”, but I don’t belive that it will be featured in his book, as it does not really match…

this work was created more or less per accident, and I like the result! This is why it is “relegated” to my blog  

Love me!

Over the last days, there was much love pain in the air around me…

no, not me neither Kevin suffering, but somebody very close to me…

it hurts a lot!

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!

Shoes to Celebrate Life

I have been working at Goodaboom’s Boutique these last 2 days, and I must say that I have a lot of fun designing all these products featuring my artwork. I have created mugs, postcards, magnets, keychains, and even aprons and ties! It is somehow very touching to see the own art on all these products.

But the most extraordinary thing I have done was to create these shoes, based on my Fantascape painting “Celebration of Life”, which has brought me many professional  satisfactions (Giclee Print sales) since I have done it. I couldn’t resist to see how the image works on shoes, and well, I must say that I like it a lot! Quite crazy, of course, but so was the painting too!

I wonder now if somebody in this world will be crazy enough to buy them! But if somebody does, she (he?) should purchase the passing keychain and tie too  

All this in Goodaboom’s Boutique…

The Beginning of a New Big Adventure….

Kevin and me have worked intensely,  over the last few days, on a new project.

We have created a video short to introduce Michael Pokocky‘s new novel

“One More Day”

This kind of video, a “booktrailer”,  is a new genre in the world of Book Publishing, and I must say that I loved doing it. One reason being that I generally love collaborative works with creative people. The other reason being that  it was a totally new challenge, artistically and intellectually. I have seen some other book trailers before, and for me they all look too much like film trailers, which I think, book trailers should not. They should keep the magic of a book, not taking anything away from the reader’s imagination. On the contrary: it should enhance it. This is why we created this video with as few film elements as possible.

This is the beginning of a new adventure involving Michael Pokocky, Kevin, me and many other people. I am not allowed to tell you more right now, but I will when the time comes…