Papercut "Irão reforça arsenal nuclear e complica relações diplomáticas com Estados Unidos"

This is an editorial piece made for the call for entries "Sou Ilustrador". Unpublished. The only information given was a title for a potential newspaper article, about Iran´s nuclear reinforcement and how it affects its relationship with the USA. I decided to go with a papercut, a technique that I love more and more as time goes by. I love how its synthetic language forces me to convey the message in very symbolic details. Unfortunately, my work wasn´t chosen, but still I´m really happy with the result.

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Papercut feito para o concurso "Sou Ilustrador", de carácter editorial. Para o concurso, apenas foi disponibilizada uma frase, o potencial título de um artigo dessa publicação: "Irão reforça arsenal nuclear e complica relações diplomáticas com Estados Unidos".

Apesar do meu trabalho não ter sido escolhido, fiquei muito satisfeita com esta ilustração.

And we´re back!

Terribly jetlagged but very happy with the time in Australia. It was full of adventures and new experiences, good food (realized Australians do a good job when it comes to fish, and this is saying something since I´m veeeeeeeeery tough to please on the fish department), koala cuddling and kangaroo feeding.

Despite the jetlag and its effects (my body takes it time to adapt itself), I feel rested and energized and will soon show some new work finished.

I´m happy to be back!

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Apesar do cansaço provocado pelo jetlag, tanto para lá, como para cá, as semanas na Austrália foram maravilhosas, cheias de aventuras e novas experiências, com muitos miminhos a koalas e a cangurus. Embora cansada, estou cheia de energia para o regresso ao trabalho!

On holidays!

Passport in my hand and I´m ready to go!

I´ll be away on holidays in Australia between tomorrow and April 25th. All shop orders received during this time will be processed and shipped upon my return to Buenos Aires.

Oh, I can´t believe we´re going there, yay!

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Estarei de férias entre amanhã e o dia 25 de Abril. Todas as encomendas na minha loja serão processadas e enviadas após o meu regresso a Buenos Aires.

Já falta mesmo pouco, viva!

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!

Strange week

This has been a very strange week, strange because there was a holiday on tuesday and the whole work rhythm suffered some (good) modifications, but mostly because we received the news of the death of my uncle. Well, I can´t complain about my life here in Buenos Aires as I love to live here, but when these things happen, I just feel very, very far away. I mean, even if I went directly to the airport the moment I got the news, I wouldn´t have made it on time for the funeral. Not being there with my cousins and aunt made me realize how far away I am. Not that I didn´t know it before, of course.

On a lighter note, we´re now officially counting down to our honeymoon trip to Australia. We have plane tickets, both international and domestic, an e-visa and lots of things on our to-do list there. I´m now compiling yarn and craft stores´ addresses from the very nice and helpful Australian knitters group on ravelry and thinking about all the local yarn I can fit into my suitcase. I can´t wait!

The funny thing is that on our way back, just like Willy Fogg made it into winning his bet, we are going to land in Buenos Aires at the exact same time of the same day we left Sydney! Cool, isn´t it?

Have a nice weekend, everyone!

Thank you cards

I´ve been working on a series of "thank you" cards for my shop, all done with cut paper illustrations. I´m loving this tecnhique more and more every single time I do it! It´s still a bit hard on my shoulders and neck but the results are so satisfying that I want to keep cutting more and more paper.

More photos here (more will be added to this set as I upload them).

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Nos intervalos do "outro" trabalho que tenho estado a fazer (de design gráfico, para clientes), estive a fazer uma série de ilustrações em papel cortado para um novo conjunto de postais para colocar brevemente à venda na minha loja. Cada vez estou a gostar mais de usar a técnica do recorte em papel para ilustrações: por um lado, é o facto de ser uma linguagem minimalista, com apenas duas cores (a do fundo e a do papel); por outro, o facto de poder ter uma expressão de traço bastante rudimentar, por ser cortado com x-acto. Apesar das dores nos ombros e no pescoço com que fico quando faço uma nova ilustração, cada dia estou mais feliz com esta técnica!

Mais fotografias deste conjunto de cartões aqui.

Knittter´s meetings and other things unrelated

No camera yet. That´s why I have absolutely no photos of our wonderful meeting last Saturday. While everyone in the northern hemisphere was celebrating the arrival of Spring, we had a lovely Autumn equinox sitting on Joji´s patio while chitchatting about knitting, patterns, yarns and generally just getting to know ourselves. She did a wonderful job receiving us all and documenting the event for posterity.

I came back home with an urge to finish the November Socks, mission that I could accomplish the following day, Sunday.

And immediately started swatching for my next project, the Victoria Yoke Pullover.

This is how we knit the "portuguese way", with the yarn around the neck. Photo complete with stained fingers from painting class.