in progress: The Mirror

i still feel sick. i have moments in the day when i feel more energetic; in others i just want to lay in bed. feel sick to my stomach. still the pressure inside my head. the sad thing is that i totally know why i am that sick - just don't have the resources to fix it and the people that could help me are miles away. so, i stay strong. i always do. i am a warrior. but i don't know for how long though. there's a limit for everything.

but anyway, concentrating in art is always a big help - when you have the energy to do so - and right now i am trying to work in the last illustration for Liquid Dreams. it is called The Mirror. 

the poem, entitled Chasing After Light, suggests a love poem, but not directly. my understanding is that there's something emotional in it, but also sort of rational, like a suave battle between two opposites.

I’d chase after you at the speed of light,
but what’s the point?
You’re already ahead of me.


Instead I’ll pace my self,
continue to move forward,
knowing that at some point in time,
you’ll come across a mirror
and reflect upon it.

i see laws of physics, which is something so interesting to work on... i love this idea of a mirror, which expresses well the duality, and also the velocity and light the poems suggests. so i initially put this female figure like being reflected in a mirror, but she can very well be penetrating another dimension of reality to escape that guy, who knows... i'm very thankful to Ricardo for giving me this poem to work on, because it really made my mind travel.


i currently work building a preparatory sketch and then, when i am sort of satisfied, i transfer the sketch to the illustration board - only the main lines, in order to suggest where the figures should be placed. then i apply this watercolor underpainting, which is a very random and intuitive process, using the basic colors of my palette of choice - in this work, blues and yellows, with a little gray to help toning it a bit. i do the transfer the most primitive and old school way you can imagine: using tracing paper and transferring the graphite lines by applying pressure on them. i know it's ridiculous, time consuming and all, but it's how it works best for me. there was a time when i tried to do the sketch right on the board, but when you're working on paper, even on a sturdy surface like illustration board, you don't have a lot of margin for mistakes. so i returned to the preparatory sketch method, which can, in a long run, save you a lot of time - and materials.

here you can see two stages of the figures in the "mirror", in the process of shading. i use white pastel for the highlights and love it.

in my paintings, i am free from commitments with reality, although my figures follow a more realistic style. i want a blend of materiality and unreal, of flesh and spirit. so nothing besides the human figures are subordinated to the physical laws as we know it - and even my figures, sometimes, suffer a little distortion in strategic parts of their bodies (my favorite body parts to distort are neck and the curve of the waist when it connects to the hips. i think those are beautiful curves and i love to elongate them!) elements like animals and plants i like to make in a mid term between the real and the abstract, maybe because i find them so pure and uncorrupted, almost like a connection between the two worlds. working in the realm of the surreal is very liberating, but sometimes a true challenge. it will all depend on what you want to achieve with your painting, what sensations you want to trigger. technique here plays a big role and even when painting the "unreal" you need to sound convincible enough, which will only happen with training and learning the ways of your materials and dominating them... they are like raw nature forces!