These Love Chains

A few minutes ago I received an email with this message:

“Tonight, right during midnight your true love will realize that she really LOVES YOU!!!

Something will happen to you between 11:00 and 12:00 am. Tomorrow you’ll receive the biggest shock of your lives. If you break this chain, you’ll have a lot of bad luck in love for the next few years.

Resend this to 15 people in 15 minutes.

COPY AND PASTE IT… DO NOT FORWARD THIS AND YOU’LL SEE WHAT HAPPENS.”

I’ve received many emails like this one in these recent months.

I understand that friends that send me these chains are worried that I’m single, without a partner ... that want me to find someone with whom I can share everything I have to offer, because I truly deserve to be happy. To all these friends, I’m really grateful for your good will and it’s not my intention to make you think otherwise about my loneliness but ... think about the fact that I NEVER resend chains. I neither have the time nor the will of looking for 15 or 10 or 20 contacts from my list to send the spiritually profound thought to, followed by a sentence of bad luck if I don’t fulfill the condition of resending it. Now… and if that was true?

What would happen if the chain in question ACTUALLY affects my life? What would happen if a strike of bad luck truly falls on me for having “broken” the chain? Then technically the fault that I’m alone and can’t find someone special would be YOURS...Yeeeah! all because of sending me cursed sentences of bad luck packaged in emotive emails that talk about faith, true love and hope in those that surround us.

So please... if you’re really concerned about my loneliness and want me to be happy and that I have good tidings in love ... introduce me to a pretty girl and together we can decide if we share something or not… friends, neighbors, even cousins! But please, stop sending me those charming “good wishes” in chain mails.

I truly like you all ... even though I don’t chat for hours on end, I truly appreciate that you all can be there when I need you, do not send chains that “demonstrate” to me that you care for me, I’d prefer you to tell me personally.

A girl like the one in the drawing would help me not to feel alone.

Is work so bad that you get paid to do it?

For a lot of people, spending their time working is horrible. The sole fact of thinking that they HAVE to get out of their comfy bed to move their asses to a distant place, with cold walls and opaque crystals, in which the only thing that seems to grow is the ulcer in their stomach, is not encouraging for anybody.

When I see questions on msn such as “What are you doing?” the answer is the same most of the time ... “Here, working like there’s not tomorrow”. None the less, this is due to a cultural tradition that tells us to do stuff in which we are suitable, in or out of our home, for which we receive an income that may be fixed or not, invariably, this activity is WORK.

Although... what I really do is not work, NOT in the sense of an obligation that one HAS to fulfill, neither the fact of having to work to live. One thinks that his life is extremely boring, when each time someone interestedly asks you “What have you done?” and the answer is always the same … “Drawing”.

Not knowing which are the hip songs, not being used to going “…to party…”

Sharing the scarce night life with special persons, interesting ones or loved ones… drinking coffee or eating a bowl of fries in a place where you listen to whispering from other people while you listen to jazz or Cuban music in the background … they’re activities that normal people consider … boring.

Even though, when seen from a different point of view... Living surrounded by sexy chicks who wear clothes that are basically tattooed on and are always flirty … making a bunny with multi-homicidal aspirations throw carrots like kunais at their victims, coloring machines that make ice pops, coloring dragons that spit fireballs, mummies that run rampantly at 4x4 trucks, or creating eastern environments for fat cows that perform Olympic disciplines, dressing two girls with halos and demon tails in pirate suits, showing a pair of black and ripped off wings a little bit … make life become really fun.

I’m a draughtsman ... illustrator to be more specific. But it’s not something that I do from 9:00 to 18:00 hrs, I don’t do it seeking to fulfill a toll, nor is it recognition my final goal. IT’S NOT something I do because I’m obliged to. Even when I suffer from blockades, which my great friends have helped me overcome..., drawing has been, is and will be my greatest pleasure.

The images that illustrate this entry, are sketches made for some years, almost all of them are old, but I believe they say a lot. They’re part of my dark wings.

Qué Rico...!!

In the illustration that decorates this entry … my great friend Vanessa, drawn with wooden colors. It doesn’t look much like her, I’m not yet accustomed to controlling my strokes on paper, but we’re progressing.

In Spanish, the word “Rico” has two meanings; the first one is possession of material goods or money, that’s not the meaning I’ll talk about. The second meaning is the cause for this entry. I like the word “Rico”, especially when is used like this : “Que rico!” it’s a phrase that makes you remember special moments, takes your memory backwards and gives you sensations, smells, tastes, textures, sounds that have been good moments in your life.

When, after being tired of walking in that small café, I sat on the little table on one of the sides with soft illumination and at the moment of tasting the herb tea and feeling the steam on my face I said .. “Que rico!”

When, after brutal hours of work, I laid down on bed, hot, soft and that nice person gave me a massage with a mint smell I thought “Que rico!”

When I tasted blackberry mousse cake for the first time I said “Que rico!”

When it was very hot during the summer and I tasted that freshly made orange juice and said “Que rico!”

When taking a stroll through the nurseries, the thin summer rain emphasized the smell of the pine and eucalyptus trees and I raised my face and said “Que rico!"

When you strongly hug that special person and you hear… “Que rico!”

Strokes ... strokes and more strokes… on paper.

I’ve been a digital artist for many years. Most of my roughs, linearts and colored works stay behind the cold crystal of the monitor, I’ve used virtual palettes and blended color channels, I’ve used selections and history brushes, worked in RGB and CMYK, Grayscale and Bitmaps, I’ve used the static Wacom for many years and bought RAM memory, hard drives, motherboards and monitors, each time with higher quality. Thinking in kilobytes, megs, gigs and teras, in .psd, .cdr, .ill, .jpg, .tif and .gif formats, compressing in .rar, visualizing thumbnails, organizing folders, burning DVDs, backing up in partitions, formatting windows, using commands and shortcuts in the keyboard and I’ve clicked on the mouse thousands of millions of times.

But it has not always been like that…

There was a time in which I worried about paper quality, the ink’s blackness, that my pens didn’t bend, that my originals didn’t wrinkle, thinking in watercolors, pastels, acrylics and wooden colors, combining colors, graphite, blue lead, soft and kneaded erasers. I liked to feel the dried ink on the Opalina board originals, the texture of Strathmore paper, the smell of Fabriano paper, the tightness of Canson paper, the dust of pastel or the smell of wood when I bit my pencils, after moments of not knowing how to set up my sketchbook.

Then work came, earning money doing what I liked the most was cool, the need of a quick production led me to use digital media. I found out about the tablet, started studying about printing media, color formats, monitor calibration, I stored my brushes, put my pencils in plastic cans, and stored my watercolors and pastels in drawers. The cloth with which I cleaned Chinese ink and acrylic got dusty and my charcoal sticks stayed stored in their cases.

Many years have passed and I find myself in times of incredible artists, that have made the passion for graphite and 2mm blue lead to be reborn within me, that have inspired me to go back to material stores to buy my sketchbook, pencils for watercolor, art markers, artists that have reminded me of the sensation of Canson under the back of my hand when drawing

Suddenly clumsy in this reencounter with my old friends, and while my studio fills again with the smell of paint and alcohol of markers, it will be enjoyable to share the results of practices in this new experiment, may the warmth of the paper texture be mutual accomplice from here and on.

I leave the first two works from my sketchbook. The first is at the head of this entry, inspired by a great friend of mine, Abril, from Guadalajara. The second, over this paragraph, result of an unlikely evening with Bren, a suigeneris (unique) and very fun girl.

Ah.. The Beginning!

First Entry.

I’ve had this account for a very long time, but I never wrote anything here ... I consider writing thoughts, feelings and emotions in public spaces like this a little risky to a degree (yes ... I know it can be changed to private mode, but paradoxically the fun is in that these kinds of things must be shared in a virtual community, it would lose relevance if I turned it on...) but on the other side, the written word can be a good venting of everything one has inside and that needs to be perceived by other people, which in the end it’s this socialization that allows us to get feedback and grow in all areas of our life.

I don’t think it’s necessary to introduce myself, because we’re not in a summer course and this is not a classroom or a conference room... Not to mention that I’ve written some things about myself in that other part of this blog. So ... this story begins, I hope it doesn’t have a predictable or boring ending. Greetings to all my buddies that drop by and those who barely know me. Welcome.

Together with this text … a PLATYMOLESEAL.. >>



















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Ashes and snow

The ASHES AND SNOW exposition is in the Mexico City, in the “Museo Nomada” (nomad museum) and I kinda don’t like myself for not being able to go see it yet, but work and weekend dealies make it almost impossible … I have several different version of the experience, related by people who’ve gone there in different hours, in different days.

On one side I got told of how wonderful it is, not only seeing the images of elephants, cheetahs and manatees interacting with people, the museum’s atmosphere, the emotive videos and how awesome the experience is, if you get there very early and avoid the long lines.

On the other side, I’ve been told how horrible it is to queue for three hours under a scorching sun and get into the museum together with a bunch of baboons (not the ones in the images) that go around making comments with a high cultural content such as... “So much waiting for this? To see elephants we would have been better going to Chapultepec Zoo!”. Besides certain human scents and the hastiness with which they make you visit the gallery.

Anyhow, I managed to get the book that’s sold inside the exhibition thanks to Yarita, which is the original with several fragments in castellan, besides a DVD that has some of the videos from the exposition. The content of the books is really amazing; I have to mention that the workmanship of the book in itself is simply magnificent. All the paper is handmade; the covers are made in Nepal (sealed with bee wax) and the interiors in Italy, packed and tied together with hibiscus tea leaves (I read that in the book description… xD).

Precious.

Seeing, reading and feeling the book is a magnificent experience, but I definitely don’t plan on missing the exposition, so once I manage to evade a little work and go for it, I’ll relate the experience. Meanwhile look up some images and avoid watching the video on youtube, which is worse that watching a pirated movie…it’s not worth it.