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and in other fascinating news: the dead sea scrolls online

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get your paint on, week 3

Week 3 was about color and color mixing. The assignment was to reproduce the colors of 4 objects and use them in a painting. It was also about pushing your boundaries, doing stuff you've never tried, so I used flat colors (and discovered they are hard to achieve!) and made a point of using objects as my subject matter, which I never do, but oh well, the objects decided to reunite in a character, what can I do...

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I've been making so many layers for my other painting, that I found myself craving for a super simple watercolor...

get your paint on, week 2

Second assignment was to get inspired by an element of a painting I chose this Jesse Reno painting (or should I say paintings?) and here's what I did:

get your paint on, week 1

Get your paint on is an e-course I'm taking. It is taught by Lisa Congdon and Mati Mcdonough. The first week assignment was to create a painting inspired by the amazing quilters of Gees Bend. Here's what I did:

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you probably can't tell but all these triangles sneaked their way into the watercolor.

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I found out about Werner Hoeflich in Jo Ann Beard's brilliant essay in The Best American Essays 2007, and never forgot about him.

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 Before:

It was a nice change, to use the week's word as form instead of content.

And to try out digital colage was fun, too.

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Mexico City sits on a valley and depends on another state for its water supply. Hundreds of thousands of its (20 million) inhabitants suffer from the lack of water.  A sad irony, for a city originally built literally on water and that continues to flood every single summer. I don't live there anymore. Still, the too-often-ignored anguish of it came to my mind with the the IF word for this week.

And in honor of their well spent lives, here are T's grandparents and mine, in our Dia de los Muertos altar:

 

The table you see is the new life of the well my parents built in 1990 when we moved from dry Mexico City to crazy-humid Xalapa. (Having to pull the water from a well makes you care about water, maybe that's really where my drawing comes from!)

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I'm only racing myself.

chopping

Had to be done.
But I can't help feeling a little guilty.

Can't help wondering, do trees suffer from the phantom limb syndrome?

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I wanted to do a red riding hood but it turned out too scary, perfect for this week's theme. I did it in the same technique as the giant. And used a tiny puzzle for a "canvas."

Haven't posted in weeks because I was traveling, then moving.

T and I now live here:

Cute little house, isn't it? And just a few yards from the house where I grew up, where my mom lives and where I will have a studio... in my childhood room!

I left this green world when I was 14 and only lived in big cities for the next 12 years. I find the deep darkness of the nights (and the bird's songs and noises at dawn) quite surprising.

Still, it feels kind of like home.

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Made this on the move, with solid watercolors because it's the only thing you can take on the plane! I am now in Wahington DC.

On our last day in Madison we visited the amazing arboretum and then ate ice-crem at the University, because -of course!- they have their own dairy store! That's Wiscosin for you!

We will miss you, Madison!

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Acrylics. Part of a color-series I've been working on for months. Each painting has a different color background and represents a different passage of a children's novel I've been working on too.

Colors have forever interested me as a theme. For a year I held a column in a magazine about them. And once I had a grant to write a novel where the cochinillla (the insect that produces red dye) was the main character. Sometimes I think my color book is something I will write when I'm 80 and in the first page I'll write: I have been preparing for this my whole life.

But in the meantime: I would love to know what do you think about this painting. 

And also,  if colors interest you too, I do recommend this amazing book.

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I'm back from a beautiful vacation in North Carolina.

Only bad moment was during a hike in the Smokey Mountains when I almost stepped on a rattlesnake.

It was my fault.

(It's generally the human's fault, isn't it?)

I was dreaming (and dreading, but mostly dreaming) of seeing a bear, and looking around instead of at the ground.

When I heard the rattle noise (not that I knew what it was) and turned down, the snake was a foot distance from my foot. And it was a lot bigger than my foot. It was green. I can't really describe it much more because all I saw was its neck, all stiff and it´s open mouth. I froze. Then I jumped. It all happened quickly but it seemed long. My legs trembled for almost the rest of the walk.

Later, when we crossed a ranger and he told us rattlesnakes bites are not necessarily fatal (sometimes you only loose the leg...) I became kind of mystical about the incident. I take it as a metaphor, that I almost lost my leg (or died) because I was wishing for imaginary bears instead of looking at what was on my path, right in front of me. I take it as a suggestion to advance more mindfully.

Later that day I read that Cherokee people, who lived in those mountains, healed rattlesnake bites with plants and roots. And that they would use the exact same remedy on people who'd been bitten than on people who'd only dreamed of being bitten.

Atmosphere, such an external word... But aren't atmospheres made of perception? Aren't dreams full of them?

The day after, a local told me that if a rattlesnake looks you in the eye but does not bite you, it´s good luck. And so I choose to believe him!