two roses

colored pencils on Stonehenge pad 5x7 in.

webdesign

A couple of days ago I learned that Geocities will close its free accounts pages later this year so I started saving files and recreating my webpages I have with them.

Montessori Open House

Magic Pencil Webnotes

Arabesque Virtual Alcazar

It's quite an amount of work since these pages were built in 2001 with Yahoo Geocities Page Builder, a free editor for beginners.

My three websites will be hosted at my domain name www.emalecdesign.com.
I also have pages in Yahoo Spain which were built either in Corel Word Perfect or Microsoft Word, so those are just to transfer to my web address.

In other words no time to draw these days.

Chinese brush painting

Here is An Album of Chinese Brush Painting published by Ning Yeh's Art Sudio in 1986,California which is a true feast for the eye.I can only dream of painting so beautiful and inspiring flowers and horses.Hopefully my trip to China this coming August will also mean purchasing art supplies since certain types of brushes and paper are required for Chinese brush painting.
Until then here are a couple of peonies from my modest attempts in this medium.

a rose

This is a birthday card in colored pencils Caran d'Ache on Bristol Board pink paper 5x7in. About an hour of drawing.

Egypt 2008

These days I am creating web pages with slideshows from last year's trip to Egypt.
Here is Luxor and a nubian village close to Elephantine island, Aswan.

inspiration

This is our neighborhood garden in Southern California in February.

self-portrait

Today I attempted my self-portrait in the mirror.

1 hour, used HB and 8B pencils on sketchbook 9x12in.

web resources

I found a useful website for introduction in oil painting, http://www.guidetooilpainting.com/default.html
The exercises are attractive to try.

one week without art

Since last Saturday I couldn't function normally, read, draw, paint.My Pc has been hijacked, spyware, trojans, Host file missing.Hopefully I could restore the Host file, install Spybot for spyware, adware and threats, install a McAfee total protection 2009.
Here is the drawing completed one week ago.From the book The Artist by Himself after Gianlorenzo Bernini's Self Portrait.

from metaphor to collage

Today I realized that I can actually translate the metaphor about Picasso the bullfighter into an artpiece and to illustrate that I created this collage that I plan to draw/paint.



I also attempted my first sketch of Picasso.

revisiting Picasso

Picasso is for me a neverending adventure into a world of so many facets, pristine like a magical tropical forest. You can never see enough of it, understand all the meanings and symbolism, sum it up to a series of patterns or a model. The artist took pleasure in his metamorphosis as powerful creator of a dynamic world of color and form.

Since my early encounter with Picasso's work I was fascinated by the effortless ease of his art, his fresh look at the world, voluptousness and at the same time voracious approach to mediums and subjects. You enter this universe and explore with him once again the world from so many perspectives his art offers.Here you have no ordinary painter. You have the artist in dialogues with the self, the masters, the world, and most of all the artistic subject.Everything else is absent from this scene. Client or critic of art, they do not exist for Picasso.

There are no inhibitions for the artist, only freedom and joy of color and form with which he experimented and created with one academic eye and the other, a child's eye.

His work cannot be labeled or expedited in a phrase,art trend, study.It escapes definition or any intuicion totalizadora how Damaso Alonso calls it.The relationship art-artist is in Picasso's case that of the bull and the torero.
The vigor of art- art as the beast and the courage, the elegance, the skill of the bull fighter.I would say that with every work or phase of his career Picasso had to confront himself and his talent with the god or monster of art symbolized by the bull.What is admirable here is the spectacle of this unique encounter.The drama, the tension between art and artist.

Picasso's Child with a Dove, 1901

This early work of Picasso has a serene beauty, melancholy, tenderness the way I see and understand it.I was fascinated with the simplicity and yet so much emotional background that I couldn't resist trying it in oil pastels on Canson Mi-teintes pad 8x11in.I finished it in less than 40 minutes and more than form and color I was interested in retaining the intimate bond between child and dove.To me this work speaks of those pious Renaissance scenes in which the gesture of the hands in prayer the child here suggests.

Pablo Picasso's Mother and Child 1922

Today I ventured into a book on Pablo Picasso with text by Hans L.C. Jaffe, Professor of Modern Art, University of Amsterdam, published by Doubleday,INc. New York in 1980.
There are 48 plates with commentaries, an introduction and biographical outline.
My interest was raised by this Maternity of 1922. Although the author refers to a mythical scene in this oil painting what I can see from the fist raised of the mother is the social message of the left in which the symbol of the fist is solidarity with the cause of the working classes.Here is my sketch in sepia, sanguine, grey conte stick on drawing pad 11x24in.





This copy was a struggle in rendering volumes and proportions the way Picasso did. Never achieving the play that Picasso work inspires, I learned that loose style, spontaneity and voluptous approach cannot be copied.

The Artist by Himself

Reading the book The Artist by Himself self-portrait drawings from youth to old age, edited by Joan Kinneir, London 1980, can be a learning journey into the art of 70 major masters from Durer to Hokusai.The self-portrait drawings are in black and white and each portrait is accompanied by excerpts from biographies, autobiographies, letters, contracts, etc.


Here is my quick sketch(right) in charcoal of Chagall's self-portrait with a grimace, 1924/25.

art readings, thoughts, artwork

Art Stepping Stones is a kaleidoscope of my art life. Here you will find my daily activity in art education the way I used to do it when I was a teenager through art readings, commentaries, art practice inspired by art masters.The studies will not be structured but rather juxtaposed for challenging my intellect and skills in various media and readings.You might see a sketch after Chagall next to a Chinese brush work.It's possible as I need stimulation of my interests through diverse sources.The neverending world of Beauty that art offers reminds always of the Latin maxim : Ars longa, vita brevis.