Colours and water

 

 

   

(2013/2014)

I simply love watching the colours spread out and interact with each other on a piece of paper. Sometimes I like using oil pastel too precisely because it does not interact with the water colours.

Human´s strange nature

I´m not quite sure what I was thinking/feeling when I drew this, although I´m pretty sure it might reflect some people´s reaction on seeing my drawings of human beings. Not in a good way. 

Something I like doing is drawing or (especially) photographing people when they are not aware of me doing so. I suppose anyone can agree it makes the result much more authentic. You might (probably not) have recognized the third person – yes, for those of you with an extremely developed imagination, it is Frida Kahlo, one of my favourite (real) artists. The last drawing shown in this sequence is of my very very special Grandmother (drawn from a very old photograph), T. Another thing I really like is quotes. The following quote has really nothing to do with the topic at hand, although I´m pretty sure it´s human´s strange nature that makes it so hard for me to draw them.

A view from Ram-ones´

I was going through some old (almost 2 year old) sketches (this is something I really enjoy doing – it´s like going through an old diary and each entry/drawing takes me back in time, sometimes to a place or moment I didn´t even recall) and I stumbled upon this one. Probably only two people will understand its title – it is the view from the lovely and always cozy and welcoming house of two very good friends of mine, in Lisbon. This drawing brings back really good memories. I miss you both A LOT!

This is the same exact drawing, the first being the original and the second an experiment with contrast and brightness. But I quite like the effect, the second looking as if the sky has gone darker.

Literart scribble

There was once a Cretan author called Nikos Kazantzakis (d 1957), most famous for his Zorba the Greek (which I´ve been really enjoying). There was once a Portuguese poet named Fernando Pessoa (d 1935). (Funny fact: Pessoa means person in Portuguese) This Person (hihi – yes, I have the sense of humour of a 10 year old) had many heteronyms, such as Ricardo Reis, Alberto Caeiro and Álvaro de Campos and all of them wrote in different ways, about different things, yet always quite insightful and philosophical (highly recommended!). You might have heard of Mensagem (meaning, Message) – every one in Portugal has (or should have, since we have to study it in school).

I have recently discovered that Kazantzakis wrote “I expect nothing. I fear nothing. I am free”. For many years (and especially after reading the Tao Ching), one of my favourite quotes has been “Want little: You will have everything. Want nothing: You will be free” (I hope I got the translation right), by Ricardo Reis. At first I was stunned by this resemblance, but I quickly reminded myself we are all human beings and there isn´t that much that separates us from each other…

I don´t usually write in my drawings, as I don´t usually draw/paint in my writings (although I have often felt like making a little drawing at the end of an exam, to cheer up the Teacher after so much marking). Therefore, I chose to call this (above) a little scribble, inspired by the insightfulness of two incredible human minds and by the “artistic” mood I was in on Saturday after watching the amazing La Double Vie de Véronique (1991), by Krzysztof Kieslowski (which surprisingly – or not so much – closely resembles the 2001 film Amélie, by Jean-Pierre Jeunet! But I will not go into that now. Great suggestion, B!).

New flatmates

On Monday I decided to buy flowers at the local market – a cute little Pansy and a huge pot full of Chrysanthemums – to cheer up and bring some more living beings into my tiny studio of a home. The following little drawings and paintings were the second consequence of this purchase (the first one was having colourful new flatmates to chat to).

Some pretty old artistic attempts

These are some of the drawings and paintings I made while attending Visual Arts in Secondary School (around 2008/2009). The first one was circle-themed and I made the circles by painting the insides of an apple and a carrot and using them as a sort of stamp to try and form a sort of tree branch. The second was one of the works I most enjoyed doing and was for Portuguese class – we had to think of the famous Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (if you don´t already know about him and his work, I highly recommend you to read some of it) and express what we thought and felt about him and his work through any form of art (we had an amazing Portuguese teacher that really knew the best ways in which to engage Art students with the study of language and literature – she is a truly special person). The two last ones are the result of an exercise we had to do for Drawing class, specifically based on one of René Lalique´s pieces.

Black & White

2012/2013

Watercolours experiments

2012/2013

In the Gulbenkian Institute´s Gardens in Lisbon.