BAIL OUT MADOFF

Turns out Madoff's unfathomable market skillz were just a Ponzi scheme after all. But hey ,what a ponzi scheme! At $50 billion estimate that's the mother of all Ponzies. In fact, I suppose that should make it (wait for it) TOO BIG TO FAIL. Just bail him out already, we must do it to save the economy! After all, you bailed out all the other financial Ponzi schemers, didn't you? Oh, I see the difference: Madoff, once caught, actually admited that what he did was fraud. It was too clearcut to deny, not enough layers of financial magic to trick the eye, no sophisticated financial merry-go-round to camuflage the simple truth. Damn, we can't have that kind of people around. The show is all about suspension of disbelief.

Where has all the money gone? Don't you realize the whole economy was itself a huge Ponzi scheme waiting to blow up? Don't you realize most of the money wasn't real to begin with?

A funny thing is, now that we are convenientely forgetting the trust-the-market mantra to bail out the creeps that got us in this mess, it slips your attention how well true market forces actually work: All this is just a huge flood, the market's way of cleaning out the trash, a wonderful demonstration of the power of its natural ecology. The crisis is doing nothing but exposing all the crap that was hiding under the carpet. Now the bubble has let out a little pus (you think it has blown? think again!) you realize how many of the revered masters of finance were nothing but douchebag schemers who never created a thing in their lives, merely played a zero-sum game to their advantage. They had no skills, not even at their random game, beyond those of a garden variety conman.

I share the same fears as everyone else, but often I think we should have let it all fail, and let the market sort it out. We need catharsis and a dose of reality. Or as a bard once put it: we don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn.

The coloured pencil is high on magic mushrooms (not me)

Drowning in washes of coloured pencil (3)

Drowning in washes of coloured pencil (2)

Drowning in washes of coloured pencil (1)

For Gurney Journey (1) - Egg Singers

Lately I've been participating in Jim Gurney's ABC challenge. Every Wednesday Jim posts a small excerpt from a science fiction manuscript and we are asked to illustrate it out of context. It's time I posted here a few of my entries. This one's text was “Their voices were high-pitched, piercing…but human.” For this one I actually did a couple of versions, but ended up deciding on the smaller crop. The big one works ok on paper but on the form factor of and ordinary screen it loses a lot (you either see the whole but no detail or you have to scroll - anyway, you lose focus and impact). You gotta consider the medium.

huge smile

Love (handles)...

...will find a way.

On the subway today

...not really.

Cute...

...until you notice it is just the constant bickering for finite resources.

Only those few things we Humans do that have a place out of that game make us any better than mere beasts. Though one must wonder in all honesty if anything we do really lies outside it...

Yes, the enlightened man would know not to play this dirty game. The semi-enlightened man knows however that, if you are forced to play...

...you should insist on winning. Not most of the time - that is just petty accounting - not once in a while.

Always.

N.

Spent the day doing Contact geometry

...in Beach Space. (this is an inside joke just for you, Boss :))

Lips

...full of expression...

In progress

Making corrections to a life drawing from a reference photograph is fraught with danger. Unless you usually draw with one eye closed, for instance, you are bound to suffer some surprises. Yet it is also a profitable exercise, as long as you take the caveat emptor into account.

taichi, or something

Charge, my stormtroopers of beauty!

Some charcoal drawings I did recently in a few days of non-stop work, for a tight deadline. I called on all my best models for this one. Thanks girls! Thank you, my sisters of mercy, my stormtroopers of beauty! With you all by my side, I shall one day charge the Louvre walls and take it for your throne. Oh, let me dangle immortality in front of you, baseless promisses of immortality are my best liar's bribe, and you love to hear it with that knowing smile!...

Y. (2)

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