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!
The Art of Doing Nothing #1
Where I live (South of Spain) it is an Art in which 90% of the population excel!
There are 1000 ways of doing nothing here, but most of the time, you can be sure that a glass of beer or sangria is involved!
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!
The Art of Eating #1: Donuts!
Yes, it is always a big pleasure for me, as a painter and a student of human nature, to watch people eating. If you haven’t already, pay attention to it in the future. There are millions of different ways to hold a fork and a knife, and each way says more about the eater than a mirror…
But I will start this series with something very basic to eat, where you don’t even need a fork and knife to eat it, (except of course if you belong to the aristocracy or are from the precious kind); Donuts!
In Cafe Masko, which I presented to you some days ago, they serve the cafe con leche with delicious tiny donuts. It is an incredible pleasure to eat them, but even more to watch people eating them. Generally the women are specialists in holding them very daintily from the top of their long fingers, and eat them slowly and elegantly, tiny crumb by tiny crumb, their heads turned absently to the horizon. The men, generally, search for the shortest way between their mouth and the fingers holding the donuts, and their eyes are fixed to the donuts, cross-eyed, when they eat them. And they need a maximum of 2 bites to be finished with them.
But the most extraordinary donut eater I have ever seen is my Kevin. And when I say “seen”, I should better say “not seen”! I can’t even show it to you because he is so fast that I never have time to see him eating his donut. A little bit like Lucky Luke, you know, that guy who shot faster than his shadow.
As you can imagine, the man on the sketch had already finished his donut and was coveting the woman’s one. This is why his face is green with envy. While I was drawing there, I was wondering if he was planing an attack…
The Art of Smoking #1
I cannot help: I find a smoking hand very aesthetic! And there are so many different ways to hold a cigarette, which is the reason why I start this series of sketches, a part of the more general series:
“The Arts of Everyday Life”
Hands are anyway a wonder of natural technique, with so many freedom parameters. No wonder that the everyday tasks which they have to accomplish can be so different from one hand to the other. But exactly these parameters are the reason why hands are so difficult to draw…
Please don’t look too exactly at my hands, they are only meant as a quick impression of the gesture. I have anyway most of the time only 1 second to catch them in one position!
The Art of Reading #2: Little Fat Hands
As I saw this woman reading her newspaper, I was totally fascinated by her little fat hands and arms, especially by her wrists, in this case only a line between arm and hand. This kind of transitions between different parts of the body can be very thankful to draw and make the charm of the whole drawing… look at baby wrists or ankles and you will understand what I mean… it is so touching some how. By this woman here, too… and strange enough, the way she holds the newspaper makes even think then her fingers are too small
The Art of Reading #1: The Wall
I started this series of sketches about people reading newspapers in my main blog some weeks ago, but as I decided to present all my paintings concerning people here, it is where they belong now.
It really fascinating to watch at them. To start with some of the papers are so gigantic that the people’s arms and hands seem to grow accordingly! So if you think, looking at this first sketch, that I don’t know the natural length of arms, you are wrong. Look at people reading newspaper, and you will see: their arms are suddenly made of elastic stuff!
What amazes me sometimes is when people come together to a Cafe, and one starts reading, holding the newspaper between him/her and friends. I find that incredibly impolite and careless!
This is by the way my nightmare picture of a couple: sitting at breakfast, the man reading newspaper, and holding it between him and her in a way that they can’t see each other. Like a wall, kind of. And in fact I guess it is really meant as a wall, consciously or not!
Sticking the Tongue out!
This is my first entry in this new blog, which, in fact, is a little brother from my professional painter website Planet Goodaboom (www.goodaboom.com}. But this one will be exclusively dedicated to my portrait art. In fact this is the beginning of what I plan to become a big adventure through and by means of cyberspace. I’ll tell you gradually about it.
I will regularly write here about my portraits painter life, my experiences, the commissions I am working on, and the sketches I am regularly doing outside on the café terraces.
Actually I am spending some weeks in a little town of the south of Spain, where I arrived some days ago. Today, for the first time since I arrived, the storm had stopped and the sun was shining and I could sit outside and sketch people. Normally here in Spain the people have loaaaads of time, and when they sit at a café, they kind of sit all the day! But this morning, I don’t know why, they were moving like crazy, coming and going incessantly. Perhaps the effect of the 3 days of storms which still sat in their bodies? It was not easy for me to catch them, I can tell you! Only one guy sat there all the time, and you won’t believe it, he spent his time sticking his tongue out at everybody! I guess you all thought the tongue was a part of the woman’s dress behind him!
PS: Don’t ask me why he did it!
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Contact me at miki@goodaboom.com
