Weekend reading

I recently bought these two titles from The Book Depository. Their service can only be recommended for it is quick and effective: books arrived safe and sound, each in its own envelope, which means I didn´t need to go pick up a package from Customs, pay storage fees there and wait for hours until all steps and procedures were completed. No. And the fact that postage costs are covered by them, that even makes it better! Great books are very accessible and are delivered to your door (they were to mine!).

The books bought are: "Whatcha mean, what´s a zine?" by Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson, and "Indie Publishing", edited by Ellen Lupton. I´m almost finishing the first one and can´t wait to have to get to the second one.

I think that this weekend will be a great opportunity to get to it, since authorities are recommending isolation to avoid swine flu spreading (even more). All events are being cancelled in town and several cities in the country have already shut down shops and malls. It feels a bit weird and, really, we don´t know anymore which information is true and accurate, so having things to do indoors will be a very good distraction.

Fortunately this week I got to go yarn shopping with Joji and my stash will certainly keep me entertained for the coming days!

(Hmmm, will the upcoming german exam be postponed too?)

Edited to add: Have a great weekend!

Short-listed!

I´m so happy to share with you that the photo above, which I took during the Backstage Tour of Sydney´s Opera House, was short-listed for inclusion in the city´s virtual travel guide Schmap. Yay!

It´s Wednesday already...

...and time seems to be flying. I can´t believe it´s the middle of the week already and less than two weeks separate me from my german language exam. Classes are over and we´re now having a winter break, so I took the free Wednesday morning to study. With some laundry and home duties in the middle, of course.

I´ve been working almost non-stop on the second book I´m illustrating. The text was written by a (blogless) dear friend of mine. We have a new contact in a publishing house in Portugal and a synopsis is being prepared as I write this.

A usual break from this activity was the painting class last Monday, again with the quick poses exercise. This was the second work and used a new brush a classmate gave to me as a present. Loved using it!

More photographs here.

Label matters

I know I´m not the most unbiased person to say this, but aren´t these labels cute? (Please indulge me on this one!)

Another happy customer.

Naked men, again

Last week there was a holiday on Monday (holidays are usually shifted to Mondays here) so we didn´t have our weekly painting class. After two weeks, then, it was more than time to go back. I did feel I was a bit rusty, though!

The exercise was to compose two paintings, each with two quick poses. We have a group discussion in the end, to assess progress and basically just find out new things about ourselves.

I can´t say that I love the two resulting paintings, but I think I did succeed in the forcing myself to try something different chapter.

More photos here.

Great Ocean Road sweater, now totally, fully, a 100% complete

Maybe it doesn´t show (ahem...) but I absolutely love this sweater. It´s based on the Victoria Yoke Pullover, but very much modified: a zipper instead of the row of buttons the pattern calls for and long sleeves instead of the elbow-length ones.

The wool was bought during the Handicrafts Fair here in Buenos Aires, directly to the producer. It´s hand-dyed and hand-spun and it was a pleasure to knit with. I started it here, then took it with me to our honeymoon in Australia and the long, long rows of stockinette stitch were done while in the car, looking at such amazing landscapes such as the ocean in the victorian seaside. The blue of the wool and the sea made me - probably not very creatively - name it "Great Ocean Road", like the beautiful one there. My mind just wanders when I think about the smell of the sea and the taste of salt in the wind! Can you tell that I miss terribly being near the sea? A girl from Lisbon like me certainly has a hard time here in Buenos Aires when it comes to the need of a blue horizon!

While knitting it, the idea of adding a zipper instead of the called-for buttons gained shape and uopn my return to Argentina I was fortunate enough to have made some new friends, who gave me their opinions. And this - having friends with knitting opinions - is such a luxury, not only because most of my friends don´t knit, but also because most of them live somewhere else.

Then, another of my lovely new friends offered to help me with the zipper.

And finally, the Little Red Riding Hood ribbon from Retrosaria arrived in the mail and I could put it over the back of the zipper.

And... guess what I´m wearing today!

More photos here.

Sketching and subtracting

These past few days have been busy sketching and developing and studies with cut out illustrations. Doing these studies has been a major part of the satisfaction a project gives me and I feel that it is being very helpful on my search to finding a "voice", or a "style" for these characters. I´ve been repeating and repeating studies, trying different combinations of "full" areas (not cut out) and "empty" ones and learning a lot from this process. It´s amazing how much the relationship between shape and background can vary with tiny little changes in what gets subtracted from the paper and what doesn´t.

Really, I´m having a grand time working on this, can you tell?

More pictures of this process here.