LECHUGUITA

if: scattered

2011-10-16T16:54:00.000-08:00

if: contraption

2011-10-12T18:56:00.000-08:00

if: ferocious

2011-09-26T17:58:00.007-08:00

and in other fascinating news: the dead sea scrolls online

if: mesmerizing

2011-09-20T16:51:00.000-08:00

if: launch

2011-06-22T17:42:00.000-08:00

if: duet

2011-04-01T17:54:00.000-08:00

get your paint on, week 3

2011-03-05T17:56:00.001-08:00

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...

if: sweater

2011-02-13T19:21:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-13T19:11:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-13T19:08:00.000-08:00

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:

if: sneaky

2010-11-23T12:08:00.001-08:00

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

if: burning

2010-11-17T19:11:00.000-08:00

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

if: afterwards

2010-11-10T10:35:00.001-08:00

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.

if: spent

2010-11-02T09:11:00.005-08:00

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!)

if: racing

2010-10-26T17:33:00.001-08:00

I'm only racing myself.

chopping

2010-10-25T16:07:00.005-08:00

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?

if: spooky

2010-10-20T08:50:00.001-08:00

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.

if: dessert

2010-09-06T09:01:00.002-08:00

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!

if: immovable

2010-08-31T09:18:00.002-08:00

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.

if: atmosphere

2010-08-25T18:27:00.004-08:00

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!

my first goccos!

2010-08-09T10:12:00.002-08:00

OK the last picture has nothing to do with this, but I'm very excited that the man I love made five jars of pickles.

jordi

2010-08-04T00:00:00.019-08:00

I did the ink looking at a picture of my father, and not at the paper. This makes you draw stuff you wouldn't when you are checking. Then for the watercolor I looked, of course.

The picture's from when he lived in Tulúm and I visited him after the hurricanes and we´d spend days getting the sand out of the cabins and redressing palm trees and enjoying the sea life. I was obsessed with the Harry Potter books that year and because I couldn't stop reading when night came, I read a couple of the (fat) books with an oil lamp!

I do not know a place more beautiful than those beaches. Shame on the hotels that are destroying it.

IF: artificial

2010-08-01T16:09:00.001-08:00

gocco gocco where art thou

2010-07-27T09:30:00.002-08:00

For my birthday El Duende (that's my mom) bought me a gocco machine! We got it from this cool lady who makes fascinators with feathers, how about that? So these days I mostly pretend to be working on my book while looking anxiously out the window. The mail man has come every day, but goccoless so far. There's one useful thing that came out of this wait though. I think RISO drying racks are just too expensive, so I came up with this (elegant) alternative made out of tack glue and combs:

Hurry mail man, carrier of my gocco!

IF: double

2010-07-24T20:35:00.001-08:00

drawn with black ink, scanned, then colored it in the computer, just like breakfast

IF: breakfast

2010-07-20T11:43:00.001-08:00

I know all about the importance of breakfast and most days I do get some, but really, for me what breaks the fast (and the sleeping) is coffee. I guess you could call it an addiction. I blame the place where I grew up. Oh yes, Coatepec is all about coffee.

Today (july 20) is Día Del Amigo (Friends Day) in Argentina, so I am a bit melancolic today, about missing my friends in Buenos Aires, where I lived for a year until a month ago or so. But hey, tomorrow is my birthday, so no time for sadness! Plus look at what my cool parents in law sent to me yesterday:

I love that they included that warning, I guess they know me pretty well!

Happy friends-day to all of you!

new friend, coming to be

2010-07-17T07:22:00.003-08:00

I admit I have again resorted to creativity as a means to neglect my cleaning-duties-after-dinner-parties...

But will you please look at my new friend here?

I already like him, he's got attitude.

Although right now, as his first coat of color paper dries, don't you find him umbereably melancholic?

I think it may be about his lack of a left foot.

...So now I have to run and buy another little box of that amazing chocolate.

IF: diary

2010-07-13T12:03:00.002-08:00

This is daily reality for me: the before and after of my Morning Pages ritual.

I kid you not.

Morning Pages are 3 pages you write first thing in the morning. They can be about anything, anything at all, but they usually end up freeing you from stuff that you would otherwise carry around all day! I've been doing them for two years. It is my diary, yes, but it is so much more than that.

The truth of my mood is very simple: if I do not write I rot. Simple, huh? Yeah but easy to forget too, whenever I "forget" to do my Morning Pages... I think is because the daily act of putting pen to paper before doing anything else reminds me of my personal truths, of who I am and what I want, and allows me to "leave the drama in the page", as Julia Cameron puts it. I now think I could have saved myself entire years of therapy if I'd known about Morning Pages before!

I like to think of my monsters (and dramas and fears and anguishes) as dangerous baobabs who'll eat up my pretty planet; and of Morning Pages as the daily act of plucking them:

"It is a question of discipline," the little prince said to me later on. "When you've finished your own toilet in the morning, then it is time to attend to the toilet of your planet, just so, with the greatest care. You must see to it that you pull up regularly all the baobabs, at the very first moment when they can be distinguished from the rosebushes which they resemble so closely in their earliest youth. It is very tedious work," the little prince added, "but very easy."

You should try it sometime, I know you have horrible voices too, that desguise as the rosebushes of responsability or coherence and that attack you and your dreams. Let them rot forever in the pit of a diary!

IF: giant

2010-07-08T09:36:00.002-08:00

Uff!! on Thurday but I made it!

For this giant I used the tecnique of Carl Cneut, an amazing flemish illustrator. There's a very cool video about it here. If you don't speak French or don't care for the talking, you can fast forward to the part where you can see directly the paper while Cneut paints one of his fairies. Worth your while!

IF: satellite

2010-07-01T10:55:00.003-08:00

This watercolor now lives with my friend Camila. Camila is a poet and a yoga teacher and a zen student. She owns a vocho and a plant with strange spiky orange flowers. And this fall (when I move yet again...) we will live in the same city for a few months, which makes me smile.

if: paisley

2010-06-23T11:07:00.039-08:00

It feels so good to finally paint something!

I've been in 3 countries in the last month,

but now I finally have a home and a desk to paint and write this summer:

Behind this wonderful tree there's a high school which is (thankfully) on vacation right now. In another wall I've set an inspiration board. I was inspired by Geninne, who seems to move even more than me, but somehow manages to unpack at ultrasonic speed and quickly set herself an amazing working space. For that and for her beautiful work, I really admire her a lot.

My new desk is in Madison, WI. Peaceful little town except for the tornado alarm the other day, that scared the hell out of me.

There was this eerie noise all of a sudden and my windows started trembling (since, as I now know, the speakers for the alarm for the entire county are placed on the roof of the aforementioned high school!!) I panicked a bit, but then I remembered Dorothy and before any cow came flying by my window I ran barefoot to the basement... It was fun.

IF: fearless

2010-05-08T19:48:00.001-08:00

...still playing with deamons. And with the wacom pad. I think the saturated version photoshop accidentaly made for me has more charm than the original.

IF: ahead

2010-04-27T07:35:00.003-08:00

I´m currently obsessed with demons because of a story I´m writing... Here one of them has decided that Hell needs a moon.

IF: detective

2010-04-20T05:02:00.004-08:00

Miss Marple, of course.

IF: expired

2010-03-22T20:06:00.002-08:00

IF: subterranean

2010-03-18T18:57:00.002-08:00

IF: brave

2010-03-08T15:13:00.006-08:00

IF: propagate

2010-02-24T09:45:00.014-08:00

frozen

2010-02-18T05:55:00.036-08:00

Did that one for IF too, months ago.

I love ink.

IF: adrift

2010-02-13T14:27:00.020-08:00

my first contribution ever, yeii!!!