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.