Life in Panama

The other day I was painting away on my balcony. There´s plenty of sea view (I can even see the entrance to the Canal) but there´s also this view:



And as latin as Panama is, everytime I step on the balcony (be it to water my plants or hang clothes to dry), I hear the men working there whistling and shouting comments. This may sound like I´m bragging, but hearing the comments you´d know that I´m not. Just not.

Anyway, so the other day I was painting and I start hearing this guy shouting and shouting, and repeating the same word over and over. Normally I just ignore it as white noise and concentrate on the waves, but this time it surfaced to conscience.

I pause. I look over.

There´s this guy, holding his protective yellow helmet on one hand, waving and shouting: "paint me! paint me!".

I wonder what he´d think if I asked him to model. In the nude.

Anyway, I finished my first canvas here in Panama:



(...and I really, really need to replace my camera. It will be 6 years old in February.)

After many, many months...

...I´m painting again and it feels so good. I missed all the brushes and colours and the freedom they contain in themselves.

Painting makes me happy.

(more photos here)

Autumn

With the end of the summer break, painting classes resumed in the beginning of March. We started with a fixed pose - and a canvas resulted - and then the quick exercises that I love. It´s good to be painting again.

A short break after...

Last week I paid a visit to a friend in Rio de Janeiro, resulting in a short break from work and blogging. Those few days were very welcome, specially now that the end of the year is so near and I´m looooonging for holidays.

There were lots of things going on, though, but being away from the computer prevented me from blogging about them.

I visited a painting workshop. It goes on during a whole Sunday, starting early morning and finishing in the evening. It´s an amazing, albeit exhausting, experience. It is very intense, not only because one discovers a lot about him or herself, but also because these discoveries are shared by the other people visiting the workshop, the models and the teacher. We come in at 9 am being just a bunch of people and leave in the evening feeling a bit like family.

Exercises are crazy fun: we start with quick poses (about 10 minute each) and end up, eighteen paintings later, painting dancing and singing models. Who, by the way, are great fun to work with. (One of the models is a painter and you can see what he has been up to here.)

See photos of all the exercises here.

Hmmm...

It feels like I´m only talking about nudes - and it may as well be so, taking from my latest posts - but I´ve been busy with other taks at hand. I´m working on my second book for kids, which takes a huge amount of time but nothing that can be shown, and looking for a publisher. Are you one? Do you know someone who may be interested in hearing from our project? I´d love to hear from you.

As for the nudes, more photos of Monday´s session here.

Another nude

This is a painting I finished on monday during painting class. I´m having so much fun doing this I wish I had painting classes more often!

Thank you!

Thank you all so much for the enthusiastic support given to abbrigate*, the project I´m developing with Joji. We´ve been both thrilled and exhausted but all in all it has been a wonderful ride.



Despite all the hard work, I´ve been working on other things as well, namely during my painting classes. Every week I realize these sessions help me so much, not only on the painting itself, but also as a means of learning about colour, coulour mixies and combinations, composition, expression, ... well, I could go on and on and on. The best thing is the wonderful environment we have during our sessions, not only among students but also with our model and our teacher. They *so* rock.

More photos here and here.

And because I´m back to my real life...

...I started painting again. Last Monday the exercise was to make two different compositions of two quick poses. Our model is the best and he holds very still in those uncomfortable poses he makes for us. He´s the best, really, and that´s why it is so enjoyable to paint him. He chose Pink Martini for the soundtrack and the atmosphere was wonderful, as usual.

More images here.

After the flu hiatus...

After a full month of flu hiatus, painting classes have resumed. We´re now painting a fixed, standing pose. after the first two-hour session, I had the model pretty much on canvas:




So, on my second session, I wanted to focus on working on the background, something I tend not to work on too much. I´m not sure if it is because I like simple backgrounds, or abstract backgrounds, but it´s usually something I don´t explore that much. During quick pose exercises I usually work out a tiny, undetailed stroke that somehow suggests a context, but that´s mostly it. This time, though, I wanted to focus on the background, as I felt the figure was pretty much done.

After the second session, it looked like this:


I still want to work on the background as I feel the painting to be unfinished. Any ideas?

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.

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.

A life of his own

Yesterday was the third and last session of our fixed pose series and the main goal was to finish the painting, that is, looking at it and feeling there was nothing else to add, and nothing else to take. The moment I finished it, I felt like "my baby" had left and gained a life of his own, and that´s why I took it to the park and photographed it under the warm light of the winter sun.

More photos of session one, two (and all of them).

Last Monday

This week´s painting class was the second session of a fixed pose. I worked a bit on the volumes and then it was time to "throw myself into the pool", as argentines say it, and start working on the background.

Backgrounds are terrible difficult for me. Mostly because I don´t feel like making a room-like situation, complete with furniture or not. I´m not very keen on drawing lines to make a room, I have no idea why. I like to see it when other people do it, though, but I don´t seem to find a way of doing it myself. Maybe it is not that I don´t like it; maybe I just don´t know how to do it.

So, how do I work a background? That´s a good question for which I have no answer. I basically try and let go the fear of ruining, and then I can paint.

Let´s see where this background takes me.

La vie en rose

It´s amazing how my attitude towards it has changed since I started my painting classes a little over one year ago. In the beginning, it was a means of meeting people and of practicing drawing, painting, proportions, composition, colour... you name it. A year later, I´m finding myself aiming to solve specific problems I feel I have, like "paint from the inside to the outside". I´m also doing some "homework" prior to going to class, like preparing canvases with a background before having the model posing.

Having painted the background in a very pink tone, it is also fun to realize how helpful it was for me not to have a white canvas, as it helped me avoid the fear of starting and ruining a painting. I call it the white canvas syndrome.

Yesterday we started a series of sessions with a fixed pose, which means the model will hold the same pose for four consecutive sessions. That allows students to really focus on details, proportions, as well as expression. This isn´t my favourite exercise - I like quick poses a lot better -, but I´m definitely enjoying the challenges it brings me. Let´s see how this painting will evolve over the next sessions.

See more pictures here.

Out of my comfort zone

The last three painting classes were spent doing the exercise I love best: composition of two (sometimes three) quick poses. As I said, I really enjoy it but I was finding that my work was looking all a bit too similar. Then, the question arose in my mind: is this what one may call "personal style" or am I not venturing out of my comfort zone?

So last week I was determined to do this exercise in a different way. Let me explain: I always do the line and do not worry too much about decomposing shapes and volumes into geometric forms. I just lay out the line and then correct it with overlaying lines, if needed. Line, or better still, the contour is the structure I work on, then - and only then - adding filling to this contour, adding volume and matter.

That´s why last week I decided to make an effort to work from the matter out, from the volume out, and if a line was to be needed, then I would add it in the end.

I think this week I was more sucessful than last week, specially on the smaller figure - I really like his arm, actually.



The same happened for the second exercise. This time the model was moving, repeating certain movements but never actually keeping still. The aim of the exercise was to represent movement, however we wanted. Once again, I tried to start from the volume outwards, not from the line inwards.



It´s funny how laws of composition or perception work, because at a certain point I felt the urgent need for lines, for the contour of the moving body.

All in all, these are the exercises that most quickly bring out certain unconscious features of one´s work - that´s why I love them so much. Next monday, though, we´ll start our four week still pose. Which brings me several new challenges.

A different kind of sweater

One of the tasks for the weekend (I actually turned down an invitation to a knitters´meeting for this!) was to hang the paintings I made last February, during the summer painting workshop. They were simple exercises but then I was so happy about them - so was Paulo - that we decided to have them framed. We picked them up a couple of weeks later and they were against a wall, waiting for the day to be hung on a wall.

They´re large (A1 size, I believe) and the three of them almost fill the whole wall, which gives the living room a nice and cosy feeling. I like having them there. As a friend of mine says, we´re putting the sweater on our home. It´s two and half years since we moved into this apartment and it now feels like home.


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Este fim-de-semana recusei um convite para um encontro de tricotadeiras para executar uma série de tarefas que estavam pendentes há algum tempo. Nem todas foram cumpridas (hmmm, a roupa de Inverno ainda está dentro de caixas!) mas esta, a de pendurar quadros na parede, foi concluída com sucesso e a nossa casa está finalmente a vestir a sua camisola, como diz uma amiga minha.

Os quadros são grandes, formato A1, suponho eu, e as molduras ficaram muito bem feitas.

Acho que a troca da roupa de Verão para a de Inverno vai ficar para o próximo fim-de-semana... isto se não tiver de ser durante a semana, dado que prometem uma mudança drástica de tempo para amanhã. A ver vamos... mas os quadros já estão na parede!

Last Monday, on my weekly painting class, we had as a task to paint 10 minute poses and compose a page with two of them. My personaly task, however, was to try and experiment doing things that I don´t usually do. One of the changes I wanted to make was to mix more my colours and, therefore, have them less saturated. I don´t believe I succeeded on that one, though, I guess you just can´t fight who you are!

In my second challenge, however, I was slightly more successful, I believe. Usually I need to draw a shape and then start highlighting the brighter and darker areas. This time around, I wanted to avoid the first line and go directly into the mass, into the body. Not so much the shape, but what makes it a shape. I think I still have a long way to go on that one because I didn´t feel specially confident doing it - it was good to get out of my comfort zone, though - and wasn´t particularly thrilled with the results. Still, I liked experimenting with it and will try to do it again next Monday. If, at the time, I am so inclined, of course.

(More photos here.)

Happy Labour Day

After three weeks of absence, last monday I dragged my jetlagged self to painting class for the quick exercises we do every other month, making compositions with quick poses. There are more images of last monday´s work here.

I´m glad to say that I´m almost over with the disturbing weight on my eyelids jetlag produces on me but am definitely looking forward for the long weekend, starting tomorrow, Labour Day. Happy May 1st to everyone!

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Depois das três semanas de ausência durante as férias, na segunda-feira passada voltei às aulas de pintura. Apesar de estar a sofrer loucamente do "síndroma sonos trocados", delirei ao saber que íamos fazer um dos meus exercícios favoritos, croquis e composição. Trata-se de pinturas de poses rápidas, criando composições de duas (às vezes três) poses na folha. No final, fazemos uma análise a todos os trabalhos, análise essa que resulta ser muito produtiva em termos de aprendizagem. Mais fotografias do trabalho da última aula aqui.

Para acabar de acertar os sonos, não há melhor que um fim-de-semana prolongado, que começa já amanhã com o feriado do Primeiro de Maio. Bom feriado e bom fim-de-semana!

Last Sunday I attended the painting workshop my teacher organizes once a month in his own studio. It´s a very fun workshop to attend, albeit exhausting! The mind is happy but the body is oh so sore the following days. We fortunately had a holiday yesterday, which was a great way to take a break of this very busy week, but leaving on holidays tomorrow makes everything seem more urgent.

Anyway, going back to the painting workshop, there are two models, a man and a woman, and we start painting short poses; then the poses become shorter and shorter and at a certain point there are no poses anymore: the models sing and dance and we try to capture what we want (or what we can, or what our mind allows us). It´s a stress-inducing exercice that forces surprising expressive traits to come out, since we don´t have time to let our mind play its "formatting" role it usually does. The truth about these exercices is that they are liberating and work wonders as to reduce the power of our own mind´s regulation devices.

Then we analyze everybody´s work and it feels like... well, like group therapy. It´s amazing how we learn so much from others´ works and perspectives.

Check out the rest of the work!

Tuesday came with my painting class. The challenge was to make a composition using only one colour (with as many tones as we may care to have).

As usual, I had fun.

More photos.

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Na terça-feira passada tive aula de pintura. O exercício da semana foi criar composições usando apenas uma cor, que poderia ser dividida em quantas tonalidades nos aprouvesse.

Mais fotografias, aqui.