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Holding on to Youth?

26/6/2014

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Went to Bar Eli in the village yesterday, the owner is a French woman name Elizabeth or affectionately called Liz. She run's the bar with her second husband, a Catalan name Antonio Diminutivo, she speaks good English because she has worked in the UK for 8 years. I had a cafe con leche and was given lovely home-made apple muffins to try, they were delicious. After I asked her about being a subject of my project, she happily agreed to be sketched and eventually asked if I can draw her husband in a bigger format and in colour because she has a self-portrait produced by a friend a long time ago and thought this a great opportunity to have a similar one of her new husband placed next to hers. They’ve been together for one year and she has owned the bar for four.

Sketching Antonio and Liz today and working on the study for Antonio’s face as he looks currently was fun. He has a greying hair, and a distinguished jaw line and a playful but proud eyes. Then she gave me the picture of  a much younger Antonio to do the portrait on and I was surprised and entertained to see the difference. There's a certain beauty in what could be seen as a kitsch way of holding on to the past, a very distant past of her husband's youth. One she could not have experienced in real life in this image of young Antonio. The portrait is possibly her way of looking into the past as a way to bare the present? 

Here's the questions swimming around in my head today: 
1. How much do we look at our past photograph and yearn to be young again? 
2. Do you like your current image? If so, why and if you don't why not? 

I could attempt to answer these myself. I don't often look at my own past photograph, but I do relate to the memory of what I thought I look like then and what I 'thought' I look like now. I don't deny that there's a difference between reality and imagined reality and most of the time we all seem to live in the imagined one. I most of the time live in my imagined idea of what I look like, and I think that a lot of people do too. I don't really want to be young again, not really for the sake of how I look. I am quite happy with the way I look now. 

Whether I like my current image in a photograph? No, not always, most of the time, my imagined image is no where near the image looking back at me from the screen. When I do a portrait of people based on photograph I just took of them, and showed it to them, most people so far has never agreed that this is roughly what they look like. I enjoy this idiosyncratic but really question the way it can really torture people. 

There's a recent podcast on a similar topic on This American Life called Is that What I look like? I've always liked this podcast, as it's stories about real people and after each stories, remnants of those people either stick with you or left some impression.. To listen click here

What are your thoughts about it? I'd love to hear it. 
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Two studies of Current Antonio and a study of his young picture. All in Led Pencil.
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Young Antonio- Portrait in progress
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Life Drawing versus Drawing from a picture

20/6/2014

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Drawing portrait from life has it's upside and downside. The first thing everybody involved noticed is that it's quite uncomfortable and awkward. For me, the artist, I notice a sense of wanting to make them ignore me, and allow that self to be as natural as possible. Naturally that's a difficult thing to do, if not utterly impossible. The more awareness we have of our need to run away from awkwardness, the more it becomes heightened in our awareness. 
I imagine as the person being drawn, the self-conscious suddenly becomes aware of itself, and all the insecurities that is strongest in our consciousness bubbles up to the surface. When asked what they are thinking, often what comes up are statements such as' please make sure you draw me pretty,' , or ' I am old now, I wish I was young again'.  And the focus becomes of 'lack' of what is not there, or is no longer there. It's very rare do I see people entirely undisturbed or completely at peace with how they look. 


Why do we focus on our imperfections? Why do we immediately imagine the worse. We can blame it on media, we can blame it on our upbringing, everybody is guilty in perpetuating the conditioned thoughts of our ugliness, while others asked about you will only see the beauty in you. Here's an example. If I were to ask you to think of your best friend, the people you like, and ask you to think of 3 things you notice about them. What we often think about is their personality, how funny they are, how much fun they are to be around, how interesting and uplifting, Rarely do these three things comprise of attributes such as 'she has a nice nose', or 'she is young and pretty'. 
While I know this is not an new topic. These postcards I drew from life shows what I see in them at the moment, as well as showing the awkwardness of my process when I am around them. The awkwardness often shows as strokes that are rushed, and the distance that I end up creating between my observation and the person. The more in depth studies of their portraits shows this gap.  
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Glamorama - Studies with Clothing 

17/6/2014

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Study of Monica
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Study of Fuensanta Flores
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Study of Maria Sole
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Big Pimp- Study of Anton Bosque

17/6/2014

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What are they thinking? 

14/6/2014

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What does these faces tell me? 
What does it tell me about what I am thinking?

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Catalonian Bobbin Lace

11/6/2014

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Introducing Maria Rafecas, 
In house no.17, Carrer Marede Deudels Dolors, just a few doors down from where I stay, you can hear click-clacking sound of these wooden bobbins being twisted into beautiful patterned edging. Bobbin lace making in this area also called Bolillos Puntos Pañuelo is a speciality of the village of L'Arboç that has been produced for hundreds of years. Maria Rafecas spends three hours a day on the so-called' pillow' that looks more like a pony's back covered in acupuncture torture device, or those wooden bobbins also reminds me to perm curlers in a hair salon. There is a drawn pattern underneath the lace to guide the twists. Maria is cheerful and talkative, she offers me coffee as I sat next to her drawing and seem surprised when she found out I take my espresso solo (or as they say in Singaporean, Kopi Gau). We spoke no common language. I used my flash cards on her and she wrote some of her answers while animatedly telling me what she thinks. It's frustrating to not be able to converse with her, while in a strange way we connected and understood each other. As David Sedaris once said, we seem to tolerate people who don't speak the same language more, as if they are nicer and better people. Understanding each other through language while aids common understanding, also comes with the burden of classifications and assumptions as we get to know more. 
At the end of the sketching, she kept double checking that I am definitely not interested to get paid for the postcard painting I gave her. This was the highlight of my day today, it was wonderful to draw her as she worked on the lace, to see a very traditional art preserved right under your nose is such a gift.  

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What are you thinking?

11/6/2014

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Maria Rafecas, 71 years old Working on her Bobbin Lace, Pillow Lace work.
què estàs pensant?    
What are you thinking? 

                             m'estic diverting 
                             I’m having fun 

¿quin consell sobre l'amor li donarà al seu jo més jove?
What advice about love would you give your younger self?
          
                           fes el que et digui el cor 
                           do what your heart tells you

quin és el millor moment del dia?
What's the best time of the day?

                            el vespre es el meu moment de tranquil·litat, quan tothom ja dorm 
                            the evening, my quiet time, when everyone already asleep


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Antonio Paredes, 62 years old
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Maria Fontanals, 86 Years old
What's the difference between drawing people life and drawing them from a picture? 


Drawing from life picks ups your state of mind at the moment, what you were thinking and what you see and didn't see. 
Often it shows your mood, your focus and attention span. Drawing from pictures reduces all the distraction of the breathing and moving subject. The images are more static as all observations are based on static object. What I want to capture when drawing life, is the mood, the often unspoken gestures. 


These are postcards I did of my subject life, they were given to them afterwards and all I have are these pictures as remnants of my time with them.  While they are drawn, some of the flash cards questions are answered, Antonio seem to have a nihilistic perspective on life, and Maria Fontalnas's handwriting has yet to be transcribed. Maria Rafecas is a happy woman, she likes her time with her bobbin lace work and she lives for her children and grandchildren. They all think the most important thing in the world is their health. 
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Fearlessly Mixing Media

9/6/2014

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Recently, I did was this piece to show my student's a way to experiment deeply and narrowly.  The theme of this piece is experimenting on medium, while staying with the same type of head, studying that head while changing all the materials you used on every head. Paper used are thick brown smooth (Hot pressed) paper, that would be able to take the layers. 
Materials used are: 
- Watercolour pencils (Inktense)
- Compressed Charcoal 
- Willow Charcoal
- Acrylic (mostly White and Purple)
- A collage of image and newspaper 
- Waterbased Inks
- Charcoal Pencils
- Pastel pencils  
- Ink Washes 


Techniques used are: 
- Dry sketches
- Wet on Wet medium 
- Collage overlay
- Charcoal on Acrylic base
- Watercolour pencils + White pencils for contrast
- Color blocking 


Did it go well?
Planning the compositions is based on attempting to superimpose some faces onto another yet not entirely overlapping so there's a crowd of heads. Some of the processes are entirely done without concern 

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The Yoda Process - Do or Don't, there is no try.

9/6/2014

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It's important to stay focused on your intention and being aware of where your attention is. A lot of artists might like to think there is an alternative, but there simply isn't. Says me to myself. It's as if I am trying to convince myself that there's no other way but the hard way. 

Process has a lot to do with being in a state of obsession. To be completely immersed and consumed by the work. At least for me, this process is irreplaceable by any other way of doing work. Obsessive state also has the risk of overdoing, and exhaustion. It's part of the process of just doing. You know the yoda quote that I always overuse is intrinsically continuously making a point. 

Questioning the progress impede on the progress. 

These Skin Portraits are taken from all kinds of sources, friends, relatives, images on posters, but mostly streets and HDB estates around my studio. The focus are old people doing their thing, living, sitting, sleeping, reading newspaper, and just being that's imposingly and quietly living the unremarkable life, the daily life. 

Sharpie marker used directly with the 'do' attitude and conscious lack of measurement or accuracy. 


What do you see?  Any questions come up? Your comments will be useful. 


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Flash Cards 

9/6/2014

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What is the best way to Nap?
In order to start engaging in the local community, and without the ability to converse in spanish, I thought it necessary to create a tool that helps me do what I want to do.



These flash cards are tools to close a gap in non-verbal communication, because of my limited spanish or catalan, it is necessary for some form of visual communication. The relationship of these images to ideas people have about what the questions are curiously conceptual. It will be interesting to see it unfold. 
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