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.