About absences

There is an argument that Hollywood likes to repeat in movies: some characters have a normal life until an event threats to destroy it (usually a rich competitor or a corporation) and they need to get an amount of money or to finish a challenge in a short lapse of time in order to survive. I write it as a way to apologize for the time since my last publication. Certainly I had loved to come back but in a rather unfortunate succession of events my life seemed to turn into that Hollywood argument.

In my previous post a life and months ago I talked about a robbery. I decided to sacrifice a part of my life in order to recover and replace the stolen objects, I got committed in an architectural office that was offered to me, it meant to stop to travel and work less in design and more in the legal side. With the work I got a credit line and used it responsibly to equip the office, also invested on my education getting software, books, education and in last place the tools to work, not the most expensive, in some cases they are second-hand or quite old. The problem was that disorganized place. They were used to charge me with responsibilities but not so fast to comply theirs, my savings and emergency resources ran out and it was clear that I needed to leave that office in the building I designed, calculated and even helped to build with my hands (this is an isometric, a technical perspective):

And that was all. These months my life is just getting a lot of work to try to pay the debts. In the road I simply had to leave so many aspects of my life, including the blogs but tried my best to be able to do it. In some days (two weeks perhaps) my only way food was water from the public service. I don’t write it to impress, is just the way sometimes life happens, we all have problems and is a fortune that it’s just a money related inconvenience. I missed to visit the friends, and I am doing my best to be here with you. My problems are far to have a near end so I thought it was a good moment to give an explanation. I just simply cannot be here, I am reposting some photos into Instagram, but all of them you have already seen them, I do it as a way to get a piece of relax and distraction, I cannot do the same here as WordPress requires more attention.

About my travels I think every place is a place to discover, so even if we don’t take a bus we are already traveling. So I am recording and learning to use the cameras I got:

With a cell phone Sharp SH-06d.

I got a cell phone from 2012, the camera has eight megapixels, I use VSCO to edit them. It has not the resolution of a modern cell phone but I take the care to shot carefully as I think it’s fantastic to have a device at color, in the eighties in my city color film was not able to be processed so my childhood memories are in black and white.

Unicorn for Pan

Is important to me to draw, always. So I drew this unicorn for a friend. I did it in computer with a stylus as a pen.

With a Sigma DP2 camera.

My digital camera was a Sony R1. I had the doubt about purchase it again, I don’t buy again what I lost as I feel like I were using an intruder, besides every time is harder to get programs able to work with its files and batteries. In its place I got a Sigma DP2, it is a very little camera with 4 megapixels. I would loved a Samsung NX500 instead but it’s fine, any modern camera can help us to don’t forget the world we see (although these little camera seems to have inside a leprechaun stubborn in drive me nuts xP)

With a film camera Canon Eos 7 and Yongnuo 50mm f1.8 lens.

On Black Friday there were big discounts and I got a SLR, I chose a Canon Eos 7 (Elan 7e in US and Eos 33V in Europe) because it was cheaper, silent, lighter and more modern than the stolen Canon EF (the Black beauty) It’s not more handsome but has amazing controls, it’s wonderful to shot with it and so silent that seems it doesn’t use rolls. I considered to get it just because with another big discount I got an already cheap Yongnuo lens.

Shot with a film compact camera Samsung ECX-1.

The Samsung film camera is a bit ugly, so much that the robbers left it. It’s the example that devices with a lot of specifications don’t mean that are funny to use.  I hope with time get nice photographs with it, in this moment the number of buttons you need to press in order to take the photograph distracts me to just see and record.

So that’s all. Happy to see you again in your blogs. I ask your compression (in case you are still there xD) about my reasons to not be able to be here. If I come back to post time will tell. A smile from far away. : )

Lady in ink

This drawing is based in a vignette of a story draw and told (a comic or fumetti considering that the author is Italian) by Hugo Pratt. It has some years and my brother’s cats were scratching it so I decided to scan it before it disappear even more…

The last days I wrote about the Divine Comedy and dreams. It’s already more than a month since the lady I love is absent. Every day I dream about her and to my despair some of them were nightmares: she loved other or she simply had forgotten me, I can control until some point my dreams so I’ve changed them for more positive stories. I assume she is preparing to decide which profession is she going to choose; I’m assuming that I’m not guilty. In the last times when I talked with her my work was heavier so I disconnected a week from the internet to finish it and have more time with her. That was something terribly wrong, she has priority above mere work, I couldn’t find words to say sorry but probably she had to travel. Who knows. It was the first time I feel this with a person I knew in internet so I don’t know much about it, just about what I feel. The first time when she just disappeared I wrote this farewell https://guaromekano.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/alone-again/ but I’m so tired of them, I mean, to say good bye. I think I’m going to do my best to be a better man and get to be with her. But it was inevitable to think in the poor Dante, he made a giant palace to his Beatriz, vast and perfect, but, among several things that means the Divine Comedy, one is about Dante’s nightmare: Beatriz is lost to him and when after crossing the distractions of the geography of hell and purgatory, he got to met her but he never got to be loved. In a certain way that subtle detail was the perfect hell to Dante: Beatriz is not saving him but punishing him; the dream turned into a sad nightmare.

Chemin boisé

Wow, I did it in 99 when I was in high school. I used my favorite tools to illustrate: Faber Castell watercolor pencils, and to the blacks trucks a charcoal pencil. In 99 film was king in photography so I couldn’t think in it as a medium to express, it was more a way to document but different to what my eyes saw so naturally I’d prefer to use colors pencils. I was happy when discovered charcoal pencils because the blacks with them could be so intense.

I’m not sure what illustration used to inspire the drawing, I think it was from an encyclopedia and I don’t know why but I think in Stuttgart.

Today I went to art stores to get special papers to use with color pencils. Sadly the city where I am today is famous for his watercolor artists so they have just papers and cardboards to watercolor and pencil. I’m going to buy, as always, from ebay or other online place.

I don’t know why I’ve to buy things as film, filters, papers, books, comics, from far away countries. The positive side is that you get so much fuel to your desires that they end triumphing.

New York (a story)

New York city was, is, a haunting motif to draw, to paint. I made paintings of New York since I was a kid. I guess is time to paint again.

Actually my passion to paint New York pictures is much bigger than my desire to visit it. Sure I’d like to go some day to there, but I’ve this esthetic feeling that not other city with skyscrapers awake in me, except, although not so strong, Chicago. It has a haunting charm and an elegance proportioned and classic. Except for a blonde girl someday I met online in those social networks before facebook that designed beautiful jewels, being herself a jewel of woman and my personal queen from there.

Once I read that New York city has the fortune to be open to the Hudson and the Ocean so it has a balance between the buildings that grow to the infinite sky but aren’t crowded among hills but to the vast sky. Could be, but I don’t feel the same with the images of other cities. Although there is one building I don’t like and it’s the UN building.

I drew it when I was studying architecture at university some six or seven years ago in the class of technical drawing. It was the last class so I asked to paint something I could enjoy because it was just a formalism to end the semester. The building seems to be the Rockefeller Center at 50’s but sadly I haven’t the photograph to search the photographer.

My favorite series about New York City are the art by Giger. Every painting and drawing has an spirit that I think match a bit my feeling about the images of New York.

A tiger… and blue shadows

I painted this tiger in the 97, when I was in high school. Actually the art teacher just sat in his desk and said us that we had to paint something whose word started with the “a”, the next class something with the “b” and so forth; so in the end I think he didn’t teach us nothing about art but yeah a lot about the alphabet LOL

You can bet that I preferred that way, the best education I could got was in my parent’s library, so I took advantage of the void to experiment by myself in painting. That tiger is based, if I’m not wrong in an encyclopedia’s photograph. Tigers and New York were my passion those years as motifs.

I didn’t want perfection but expression. For that reason I used strong, watery and incomplete brushes to the sky because I thought, and I think, that the white of the paper is also a color.

Blue shadows

When you paint you learn to observe details, and I think if you like photograph what I’m going to write could be useful to you: the shadows are not black, usually they seem to reflect the atmosphere so when you take a photograph in the shadow it seems to have a bluish tone. When cameras have auto white balance they try to compensate but I think that’s good when you are taking a portrait, but to the nature it can end as a photography not natural to what our mind have seen. Be careful.

The shadows can take nice blue tones, for example see this photograph:

meanwhile a shadow

I discovered it observing the shadows of products in the market and I decided to not use black in certain paintings, other times I’d suppress the brown, and things like that. Of course shadows change with the day, but I’d discover that in the future.

That was the reason I used a strong blue shadow in the tree.

Post-data: By the way the teacher put me a “20” upon my painting (grrr!) and before you send rotten tomatoes in Peru the score is from 0 to 20, not 0 to 100 ;-)

Walking man

I did this painting with watercolor some years ago, perhaps more than ten years ago :S

I  based it in a picture from a newspaper, but I give it, I tried to, a soft substance using a toothbrush to spread the colors. I let white points to reflect the shine of the sun.

Flujos de energía

 

I draw a lot, not necessarily works of arts, they are technic drawings, but I’ve fun designing electric connections, every point is a point where electricity is transformed in a lot of things: it can be the light that dimly create the mood for a romantic dinner, the reflected light that give you a path in the dark but at the same time enough shadow to create a mystery, also it’s a point of control, nexus between levels, the light that can save you in case of emergency.

But there is an aspect I enjoy about those drawings, it’s that the norm is very open about the final drawing, so my drawings are very personal, it’s my design (reviewed by an electrical engineer of course) and it’s my choice give them a certain curve or length of arch. I try to transmit that energy or that calm or any idea I feel.

Pretty boring I guess, lol.