Ladies and Gentlemen...

...Mr Leonard Cohen.

Leonard was kind enough to visit all of us, yesterday, in Lisbon, by the river Tagus.
This morning we all woke up a bit dazed. I tried to describe it to a friend, but failed in the attempt. Around tea time these doodles came out. I decided to leave them here so that a few years from now this will remind me of a special evening.

Yes, Leonard, you left us all satisfied. Farewell.

ps: Apropos, My 23 year old friend, who is pretty hot, says she would still (totally) do you ;) (yeah, I'll slip you her number - it seems it's true, you do live forever when you wrote a line or two!)

vine charcoal + compressed charcoal + charcoal pencil + mirror + weird look on face

Oh, and by the way...

...this blog is now 3 years old :)

Happy birthday to me...Happy Birthday tooo meeeeeee......

Y.

And you? What of you? You... just cannot be taken seriously! ;)

L.

Loulou had the kind of skin that seems to shine with its own light. An example of the effects of subsurface scattering that are so typical of a certain type of fair french skin and that Bouguereau painted so wonderfuly - a kind of automatic real life photoshop blur+glow arises from all those photons scattering through adjacent spots of skin, capilaries and so on. Sorry Loulou, the drawing was too fast, doesn't look like you at all, but it stays here to remind me that I must one day master those wonderful fancies of light...

with apologies to mr. Sargent and Madame X

scarf mania (2)

scarf mania (1)

charcoal dust, vine charcoal and mirror

Porto 2008 - Nathan

My friend Nathan, utterly enthusiastic (maybe actually *too* much, Nathan! :)) about a numerical semigroups seminar.

30 minutes female nude in coloured pencil (2)

30 minutes female nude in coloured pencil (1)

female nude in coloured pencil (2)

female nude in coloured pencil (1)

Female nude in coloured pencil. About 4 minutes each, but variable, as the model changed pose at her whim - the rush was part of the fun, you could hear discernible grunts of frustration and pleading everytime she decided to move "too soon". You had to catch the pose in the first few seconds and then annotate in colour - always first things first, stressing the main points, avoiding potentially costly flourishes, never knowing when the window of opportunity would shut down.

pimm

examination season (1)

caneta de acetato

porto(4)

porto(3)

Porto (2)

porto 2008 (1)

chiaroscuro

feet

I enjoyed the curious position of those toes and felt the exercice came out pretty good.

and another

another 20 min

20 min

...ah, what the hell

...here's the whole goddamn lot of 'em!

I love the way they sort of wiggle into place around the page, as if somehow they struggled to find elbow room and finally came to rest comfortably, each in their own territory. It always amuses me to find what composition one automatically creates while scrambling for white space and black ink, one 40 seconds drawing after another. That's a "right brain" exercise if I ever found one, since all of the conscious mind is busy enough trying to interfere and mess up the actual task of drawing each figure, and therefore the unacknowledged task of composition is truly automatic and should be a good diagnostic of how much "art" has really sunk into your subconscious.

...and a few more

more brush

chinese brush (2)

It was my first experience with a really wet chinese brush. To look at that deep black ink as something that can be erased, washed, pushed and pulled across the page, then built upon, layer upon layer, in such a forgiving, dynamic way, was amazing fun. Then class stopped momentarily for tea and cookies, a revered ritual there, and as I sipped at my cup it came to me to play with a dry brush. I loved the way it refuses to hold a point, it was even more my kind of disaster than the fluidity of a wet brush (isn't it amazing in how many way something can slip out of your control?). First you realize that a thin precise line is impossible. Then you stop desiring it altogether. Every stroke creates random masses of semi-parallel lines, in which your intention, speed, and boldness of action - or timidity - are apparent. Nothing counts as much in such a stream of furious lines beyond the sincerity of the charge. I found myself swinging and singing under my breath, and marvelling as the shape started fading in, each pencil of lines defined not a and not by a shape of a bone or muscle, but by its "motion", or by my motion as I stroked it mentally in passing. A body defined by the physical memory of the way you slapped it admiringly with your moving hand and brush. It was my favorite drawing of the day, by far...(you can see it two posts below this one)