The Power of Daydreaming
Ink & Watercolour
For about 6 months now I have been in the process of moving.
Moving from one house into the other, from one art gallery into the other.
I hate packing. And believe me, the amount of painting materials and paintings I have is gigantic, so to move only this part of my past life is already a life’s work. This is why I decided to do it gradually, taking it easy. The Housing market in Spain being at a standstill, nobody is rushing to buy my lovely house, so I can take as much time as I need.
The other day I was there, about 260 kilometres north of here, and I wanted to bring back my big new canvasses, which I ordered there before I left last Summer, but unfortunately they are so big that they don’t fit into the car. Frustrated, I decided to bring back some of my older sketch books, and other little things.
Today, a little bit bored and without any energy to start some new stuff, I had a glance at some of them, and found sketches which I of course had totally forgotten. This happens to me all the time by the way: I normally paint so fast and so prolifically that my paintings have no time to get recorded in my memory! Anyway, this is how I found this one. As I saw it, I remembered every detail again. A young girl had posed for me at that time for a fast sketch, and I remember how, a little bit annoyed by the boring position I had started to imagine things around her… and especially the cushions on the armchair, under her bum and behind her back had more and more taken the form of wings which seemed to grow from her body… and I even saw lots of butterflies flying all around her head!
A typical example of what suddenly happens to my brain when I get bored… I see things… bananas things…
some might call it the power of daydreaming!
Not like fishes!
Pastel & Coloured Pencils, 50 x 65 cm – 2009
…
I wanted to emphasize the impression of light, and this is why I didn’t put too many details.
This little boy has got a sister some days ago, a tiny little thing, and I saw her photo on the day she was born. I couldn’t believe what I saw and screamed:
“Look, Kevin, she is already completely formed!”
Kevin looked at me, amazed, then started laughing:
“What did you thunk, that they look like fishes when they come out?”
Honestly: I have no idea what I was thinking, but fact is that never before in my life I had seen a a 12 hours old baby!
The Long and The Short
Ink & Watercolour
I don’t remember what they were looking at as I was sketching them, but it was certainly amazing enough to have them stand still for the time I needed for my drawing!
You might think, looking at these portraits, that I am exaggerating a lot, but I don’t, at least not consciously. I am not trying to make any caricature, but I am not searching either for exact likeness. In fact I just let my eyes and my hand and my pen and my brushes work together and give an impression of what is in front of them.
The good thing being that I am quite sure that nobody ever will come to this blog and write insults to me for having painted them like that!
The Art of Being Men and Women
It was last Saturday afternoon ( 31st of May 2008 ) in a little town called Castro Marim, in Portugal, by the Spanish border. I was sitting in our motorhome, sketching some typical houses, as I saw these men standing in the middle of the road. It had started with one, then another one had joined, then the biker had stopped and finally, as I started to sketch, the fourth one (on the left) joined the group.
One hour later, the four men were still standing there, with at least 10 others, all gathered around the biker. All men. No one woman around..
I saw a lot of women the next morning, in groups too, not standing around, but hurrying to a mysterious place, each with a vase of flowers in their hands.
And don’t tell me that this is an accident… we, men and women, are still SO different!!!
A Lawyer painted by A Bull
Here is my last portrait painted on commission. I must admit, it was hard to finish! But he is on his way to Germany now, the “Herr Rechtsanwalt” (Mister Lawyer… by the way a great one, ask me info if you need one!), well rolled in his cardboard tube and I can only hope that he will arrive punctually for his birthday on the 27th of May.
Portrait is a difficult art. Some artists try it, but most of them abandon. I saw it many times amongst my artists friends, and my art students, from which -sadly- not one persevered. Some people say that portraits in the style I do most of them (by the way, it is the client that sets the style, not really my choice!), “only” look like a photograph and that it is not “real” art. I don’t agree at all. If you look on the net, you will see a lot of portraits, done from photographs and trying to look like them, and which finally look like dead porcelain puppets, or even worse. So please, don’t tell me it is not an art: when they are well-done, with love and deep sensitivity for art and the model, they simply look wonderful, and as alive as the person him( or her)self. I saw many people crying when I delivered them the portraits they ordered from me, and they took me in their arms, and they said:
“Thank you so much, it is so wonderful!”
and most of the time they came back to me, brought me a moving gift and commissioned a further portrait from me.
Is this not the essence of art, to move people to tears?
I think it is…
Anyway, as I said, a good “photographic portrait” is a very difficult art. The tiniest deviation in the eyes or mouth line can change the whole expression and even the whole person. Each point of light and each shadow reflect a different character. And this is where it becomes complicated, much work, and, at the end, art!
I rarely spend less than 25 hours to make such a portrait. I first do the drawing, emphasizing the head shape and the main features, and the main part of light and shadow. Then I put a first level of pastel chalk to model the face and reach a first impression of lights and shadows. Then a second level of pastel to refine everything, especially the similarity with the model.
And then begins a long, difficult but exciting phase of work with colour pens, hours and hours of observation, of research, of tiny steps which at the end lead to the real similarity and give character and life to the painted portrait.
A good portrait is not only much work, but it is too a deep effort of sensitivity. It is essential for me to put myself into the skin of the model when I paint him. The result being that with time passing by I start to lose my own personality and have the feeling to become the model myself. How often, with this one for example, I found myself smiling like him, apparently forced to smile like him to be able to paint his smile! Or, one day I had to paint a cross-eyed child, and I tell you, I finished up cross-eyed myself, which of course, complicated the drawing process…
I said at the beginning, that I suffered finishing the lawyer. Why? He has a quite easy face, no complications, no deformations, is not cross-eyed, and has a beautiful, natural smile: the perfect model! The problem was that I had been forced to abandon him in the middle of the process, you might say adjourned, to paint a series of 13 commissioned bullfight paintings. At the end, I saw bulls everywhere and even worse, considering the fact that I invest myself as much in the bulls as in the portraits, I had become a bull myself!
Impossible then to re-enter the lawyer’s skin!
But who knows, perhaps this portrait one day will reach astronomic prices, having been painted by a bull? One already saw paintings by monkeys sold for crazy money. So why not a bull?!
The Art of Eating #2: Not Eating!
My first entry about the Art of Eating was about eating donuts, especially about the differences between men and women accomplishing this sacred act.
Today it will also be about eating donuts, or more exactly: not eating them.
The other day I saw this brave Granny at Masko. Like always they served her a free donut with her coffee. Well, I don’t know it they did it on purpose or if it was a mistake, but in fact they served her 2 donuts, which made her appear even braver to me. The woman was sitting there, her arms and hands literally nailed to her chair, the eyes immovably fixed to a spot of invisible interest in front of her. I wondered after a certain time what was the aim of this immobility exercise, as the woman didn’t even make a movement to drink her coffee. But after a while I understood: judging by her numerous chins and the spare tyre around her body, the aim was obviously to avoid with eyes and body the little plate containing the two donuts. Poor woman! The waitress had even had the idea to put the plate upon the serviette dispenser, at Granny’s eye level… and to complicate matters further, the two donuts had come suddenly to life, smiling and winking at her.
The lady didn’t weaken. Sometimes I could perceive some nervous ticks in her hands, as if she was about to move them, but no, she resisted. A lifetime passed. Then suddenly, like a chameleon catching a fly, her two hands shot out simultaneously, and in one quick movement grabbed at the plate, taking one donut in each hand and shoving both togetehr in her mouth, swallowing them in one go.
A second later she resumed first position, as if nothing had happened!
The Art of Reading # 4 : Gone with The Wind
I don’t know about you, but I am a very undisciplined newspaper reader. When I read a newspaper, – what, I confess, I seldom do, above all because I don’t want my happiness to be spoiled by all the bad news… I know, I know, very immature and egotistical!- it is simply a fight. It is really not easy, for a tiny creature such as I, to cope with it: hold the vast billowing pages, fold them properly, keep them in the right order, etc. It’s like an Origami class. The result being that I have pages all over and the bigger the paper, the bigger the mess!
The situation escalates dramatically when I try to read a newspaper sitting by the beach, where the wind is usually blowing. And I am not the only one fighting against the elements. I saw this woman the other day as I was sketching in a cafe by the beach, it was simply hilarious. She had not the slightest idea how to keep all the pages in her hands, they literally flew all over the place! And you won’t believe what I also saw: one even made it out to sea and a boat snapped it up, took the wind and sailed off with it!
PS: I think this is a problem which we women have. When I watch men reading newspapers, they are normally much more disciplined, and in fact they don’t like it at all when the pages get in the wrong order or the crises are in the wrong place…
She loves My Man’s Feet, the Bitch!
Something very funny happened to us the other day as we were sitting at Cafe Masko. I was sketching people, like always, and Kevin was reading. I vaguely noticed a woman going from table to table, distributing leaflets and explaining something, but I was much too concentrated in my work to be able to listen what it was all about. But I noticed that she avoided coming to our table.
Just before she left, I saw her standing not far away, observing us, She could not see that I was observing her myself, from behind my sunglasses. Suddenly she took the decision and approached our table:
„Hello, darling!”
she said to me,
I am always quite upset when people interrupt me while I am sketching, but well, I guess they don’t realise that, in a way, they’re invading my workplace! And well, I never could get used to strangers calling me “Darling”… I hate it in fact, even if Kevin explains to me every time, that it does not mean anything. At the beginning when we met, he used to call some women “darling” himself, and I went bananas! The darlings are gone now, although sometimes the even worse “Hi, Love”" escapes from his mouth…
Anyway… after this ceremonial greeting the woman started reading from a leaflet which looked like the dead sea scrolls…
“Complete care for hands and feet
Manicure and varnish
Luxury manicure and varnish
Full set nail extension
Infills
Nail art…”
I really tried to stay polite and patient. But as I heard the word “art”, I simply lost it! You need to know, I don’t care for my nails, and even less than other people care for them, it is simply not my thing. And anyway I wanted to go on sketching, seeing that my model was about to leave. Suddenly, in an instant of genial inspiration, I took the paper from her hand, handed it to Kevin and said:
“Look, this is more something for him!”
(and in fact it is!)
The woman was shocked to stony silence for a long while, her sales rhythm interrupted. She had surely not planned for this scenario, frozen, with an open mouth, and eyes wandering back and forth from me to Kevin. But eventually, she recovered her words:
“Oh great, I love mens feet!”
And she started to tell Kevin that he should come to her and she would care for his feet. My desire to sketch had disappeared in an instant!
“Hey, wait a moment… let me have a look at you, to see if I really can trust you with my Kevin’s feet!”
Yet again, she was rocked back on her heels, and I really started to look at her, to ensure if she was ugly enough to care for my Kevin’s feet. She was.
“Yes, I guess I can…”
“Of course you can, He will love it!”
At that moment, I lost the will to live, and just sat there depressed, while she read the whole anti ageing recipe to Kevin. And as she left, she said to him:
“Bye, love, see you soon!”
I DOUBT IT…
The Art of Reading #3 : A Literate Tattoo
When you observe people reading their newspapers, above all, I guess, when they sit in a public place like our Cafe Masko, you really can see that the whole personality is involved in this act. Not only the hands which hold the paper, but also the body , the head, the hair, the lips, etc.
Even the tattoo seems “to lend an eye”!
To be honest, just by looking at the way this guy is reading, I know that he could not be my friend. You might think that I judge too quickly, but this attitude says so much about his character, I find. I would be really interested to know what YOU think he is inside, when you look at my sketch. It would be great if you could tell me in your comments…
Anyway, he was a great model for me, and I am thankful for it!
ATTENTION PLEASE!
I speak and read French, German, English, Spanish, and understand some others too…
so please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or to contact me in your own language!
Selfportrait #2: Am I rock’n roll?
Since I met Kev Moore, my life has changed totally: I AM HAPPY!
Totally happy.
There is just one thing which bothers me a little bit, but really, just a little bit. As you can imagine when you look at him, he loves long hair. He finds it rock’n roll. Now, I have quite wild hair and I could never tame it, and neither could the hairdressers from all around the world. This is the reason why I used to keep it not too long before I met Kevin. But now, he has forbidden me to cut it.
And now, because I am so happy, my body is happy too, and my hair is growing longer and wilder than ever. Most of the time, I keep it hidden under a golf hat when I go out, but well, at home it is different, and above all Kevin wants to see it sometimes, so I have to free it.
Just when he is away, gigging somewhere, like this weekend, I can’t stand this hair everywhere any more and I find I am forced to do something. Unfortunately I have nothing at home in the way of hair accessories which women normally have to help them. But this weekend, I had the fantastic idea to use these things one uses to hang wet clothes on a line (help, how are they called in English?) to tie my hair!
I wonder what Kevin will say when he sees my new look… will he find it rock’n roll?
Ah, by the way, there is something else which has changed since I met him:
I always wear his big Rock T-Shirts when I paint, and I love it!!
Well, to tell the whole truth, I alternate them with my Dad’s shirts, which are even bigger…
(not in the length, in the width!)
ATTENTION PLEASE!
I speak and read French, German, English, Spanish, and understand some others too…
so please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or to contact me in your own language!
About
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Contact me at miki@goodaboom.com
