The covers of Lancet Neurology: January

  I'm doing drawings for the cover of the magazine in 2016.

  In the cover of January you can see a sea-brain where a group of figures, by collaborating, are trying to bring towards themselves a raft with some people that seem to be disoriented, isolated or concentrated on themselves.

  On the raft there are fewer people to accentuate the idea of the vulnerability and the loneliness they may feel because they represent the sick.

  Those of the group symbolize the researchers, they work as a team, it's not well understood whether from another raft or from a kind of pier on the mainland.

 

The Lancet in Copenhagen.

The fresco of the attic finished

  It was missing that I included some pictures of the result; here they are:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Illustration in a fancín

  The other day I met for a coffee my friend Piedad, she involved me in an activity she had to do: she would write a text on the fairy tale "The Bremen Town Musicians" for a fancín and she suggested me to draw an illustration...for the following day!

  I remembered well the tale and, when I reread it, I thought that it was not among my favorites.

  Many people remember the sentence "any place is better than death" and I liked to overturn this message.

  The 4 animals have crossed the bridge and they are walking towards a horizon by leaving behind a mountain with cultivated terraces that looks like a ziggurat. Above, a cemetery with cipress trees and, on the slopes, some of the home which "the little animals" have fled.

  That animals!

  I understand them and I would do the same but perhaps we should have less fear of that mountain whose peak touches the sky...

  ...although the horizon also touches the sky!

 Now I like more the Brothers Grimm fairy tale.  

The test by Piedad Valverde and my illustration.

Another engraving for the contest of Vivanco and the ESDIR (II)

  In the Vivanco winery of Briones (La Rioja) there is already the exhibition of the awarded and the selected  engravings. It will last until September.

  What, at the end, I presented is entitled "mirror": within the rectangular frame of the mirror is reflected a figure of a drawing of Pontormo (it's virtually a copy with the addiction of shadows) and behind a tapestry where the grapes and the laurels alternate and mingle.

  

Pontormo

  For the design of this tapestry I drew an iranian shield, in which I changed part of the ornamental motifs with laurel wreaths, grapes and vine leaves.

Chest armor. Iran, XVIII-XIX century, steel and gold.

  After all the detours I told you in the entry that forms the first part of this one, I decided that, instead of theorizing about the eternal pursuit by Apollo in any form of the bacchic, also in any of its forms, the matter was to pass to the action and to pursue "the alive which escapes" with my engraving without further ado (with the umility due to the gods, of course!).

  But... look at what came out: the fusion of the symbols of both the gods/principles (bacchic and apollonian) has been given in a vision through the mirror and the figure of Pontormo who is watching, I myself while was making the engraving and the spectator when is in front of it, assumes the attitude of when you want to see something "further".

Mirror

  In this image the shadows of the figure are missing; they are engraved on a second plate, also of copper, which is printed on the same paper with the greenish tone of the mirror frame (in the print you can see the figure complete and with a border around).

  Digital version of the exhibition catalog with all the selected works:

 http://www.esdir.eu/Upload/Externos/catalogo-VIII-Vivanco/

"El correo", wednesday 12-8-2015.

  

The fresco of the attic almost finished

  This afternoon opens the exhibition where we will show a photo montage of the fresco of the attic (there isn't distance sufficient to make a unique frontal photo).

  In an early entry of this blog you can see the first stages of its implementation.

  This image gives an idea of what the fresco is before being ended with the missing dry retouching.

  The wall is about 3 x 2,45 meters.

Some elements are original and others are copies or interpretations of other works; the fresco is an exercise of a course of second level.

I proposed this subject of the map to Ana, Agustín y Bea (with my "C" ACAB, the name of the city I painted) because this would have allowed us to practice with various subjects within a unified composition: landscape, figure, ornamental elements, etc.

A map for a collective

  A few weeks ago, Sebastián Fabra invited me to partecipate in this exhibition:

  I retook the watercolor sketch for the fresco of the attic and I set to work on 4 copper plates that then remained in 3.

  In addition to the imaginary map, there are images from the balsa, the city and the "lighthouse-egg".

  Also, a strophe of a poem by Augustín García  Calvo, "Las moras negras", that I had already used in the program of my exhibition in Granada in 1997:

  It's something like this (aquatint and etching):

Another engraving for the contest of Vivanco and the ESDIR (i)

  As in 2014, also this year I have spent some days of spring to prepare something to present to the contest organized by the Vivanco winery and by the school of design of La Rioja.

  My attention to the subject of the wine, that was woken up somewhat by the commission I received for the Tralascuestas winery and that went on with the fresco of Laura and the engraving for the contest of last year, here has a new chapter. 

  I started with two ideas:

   The first idea retook the interpretation of the subject of the access to the world of the wine as a rite of initiation and growth that I had already treated on a drawing of much time ago inspired by a Picasso engraving I saw in Barcelona (which, by the way, is also in the collection of the Vivanco museum of Briones, in La Rioja) and, much later, in a fresco I painted in Rome on a brick.

Homage. Charcoal

Fresco

Watercolor sketches. "En la bodega"

  The other idea also had to do somewhat with an initiation process, but, this time, instead of a guy who watches how an adult is drinking from the "porrón", a young figure in a more intimate setting, an interior setting, - helped by the wine - places (or remove) a pair of glasses to another figure (i.e. he causes a change in the perception of the reality).

But I'm trying to be clearer with the subjects so that I descarded them.

As I live in La Rioja where many things revolve around the wine and the people drink so much, there have been many times in which I have felt fed up with this subject. 

I thought there would be two Bacchuses just as it was considered that there would be two Venuses and I did a variation of the famous painting by Tiziano:

 

  But not even it was much clear, was it?...

  So I decided to come back to the subject of Apollo fascinated by the world of Bacchus that I had treated in the engraving for the contest 2014 but now Apollo would change his strategy: he wouldn't photograph Bacchus while he was sleeping (nor he would chase after Daphne as the musicians chased after a "living" music) but he would deploy his ingenuity to attract the attention.

 First it was a graffiti artist who attracted the interest of other young people playing with a ball:

(The image of the graffiti is by Blue)

  And then a painter who was painting the front of his workshop (as I did with mine) and who attracts the attention of wine drinkers (also the people in my neighborhood stopped and talked to me when I did it)

  Apollo over a ladder was painting spirals of vines and grapes while drinkers with their wine glasses looked at him with curiosity and attention (mutual fascination finally?)

  The painter wore a shirt with an archer (the bow is the symbol of Apollo) inspired by an image of "The Arabian Nights" by Pasolini, that seemed to have like target the wine drinkers (the figures are based on "The forge of Vulcan by Velázquez).

"The forge of Vulcan", Velázquez.

"The Arabian Nights", Pasolini,

  But when I was going to etche the plates I got tired of all these detours and, without sketches, I etched on the plates the engraving I presented...

(to be continued)

More watercolors from the albums

  There has been here a leap in time; the watercolors you will see from now on in the new blog spots will belong to the albums of the same time with a not covered period between the last watercolors I published and the current moment.

Magdalena-heart

M.Elena and Merche
My I-child I try to control searches with anxiety women (these ones and others ones) that have already (or will have) other children or men.
They are the same that incite me to jump "the obstacle", not to block myself.. 

A bird nest in the chest

The group