Category: graphic diary

Who knew (I didn’t) that these sketches I’ve been filling my sketchbook with would become a series? I didn’t see it coming, but I’m glad I noticed a trend in my embroidery projects and decided to act on it.

Last January at the air Embroidery Club we stitched a sketch I made (and adapted for embroidery) just outside my studio. It’s not a fancy monument, or one of our beautiful city’s ex-libris. Quite the contrary: it’s a simple, everyday life scene, one depicting what makes living here such a pleasure. It was made right outside of my studio: we have a little square with a garden, two kiosks (I know, we’re spoiled!) with a few tables and chairs for people to have their “bica” (espresso) and read the paper. Read more

1 Oct ’15

October

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It’s hard to believe that it’s October already. Time flies and all those clichés about it being like sand escaping our fingers… well, they’re true. We’re three months away from the end of 2015, Summer arrived, been and went (at least that’s what the calendar says). Were it not for the Embroidery Club‘s projects, I wouldn’t even notice that it was October already. (Well, the Embroidery Club and taxes, really, because VAT happens every three months).

But it’s not about taxes I want to write about today. It’s October’s air Embroidery Club project. Every time I look at this embroidery I recall how much I enjoyed my trip back to Macau last April. It was so, so good! It was so good to go back, this time around with my husband and daughter, and also my parents, and revisit the three different zones where we lived when we were there, eat the delicacies I learned to love, remember episodes of my life as a teenager. I’m sure Alice will recall nothing of this trip, but to me it was so important to have her there with me.

One evening, seating on my friend Inês’s balcony, I made a sketch of the view, similar to the one we had in our second home there. While I sketched, light turned to dusk and then to darkness, quickly as it usually does in the tropics, and that’s how I retained this image. Months later, I thought about turning this sketch into an embroidery and sharing it with the members of the Embroidery Club. The most striking image was the lights coming on in the buildings in the horizon, the air turning slightly cooler, but still heavy with humidity. That’s what I recalled when stitching it, revisiting the landscape of my youth populated with new elements that pay testimony to the growth Macau has witnessed.

Embroidery gives me the time to think, to remember, to feel again, and that is very, very good.

É difícil acreditar que já estamos em Outubro. O tempo passa por mim a voar, e todos os clichés sobre o tempo ser como areia a escapar-se por entre os dedos são, ou parecem ser, verdadeiros. Estamos a três meses do fim do ano, o Verão chegou, esteve e já se foi (pelo menos no calendário), e não fossem os projectos do Clube de Bordado se calhar nem dava conta que tinha chegado um novo mês (bom, os projectos do Clube de Bordado e o calendário dos impostos, vá, que isso também é um desagradável lembrete de que há que preencher a declaração de IVA e também fazer o respectivo pagamento).

Mas hoje não é sobre impostos que quero falar, mas sim do projecto de Outubro do Clube de Bordado. Cada vez que olho para este bordado me lembro de como gostei, mesmo!, de voltar a visitar Macau em Abril passado. Que bom, que bom que foi! Foi tão bom voltar a Macau, desta vez com o marido e a filhota, e também os pais, e rever os prédios onde vivi, os lugares aonde ia, as iguarias que lá aprendi a apreciar. Foi bom rever amigos, ver como vivem neste Macau que tem mais vinte anos do que quando de lá saí. Foi uma viagem realmente emocionante para mim, e apesar de saber que a Alice de nada se vai lembrar, foi emocionante levá-la comigo neste regresso.

Um dia, sentada na varanda da casa da minha amiga Inês, que generosamente nos recebeu, fiz um desenho da vista linda da Baía da Praia Grande, uma vista muito parecida com aquela que tínhamos na segunda casa em que morámos quando lá vivemos. Enquanto desenhava, a noite tropical caiu em menos de nada, chegou o lusco-fusco e as luzes começaram a acender-se.

Meses mais tarde, pensei em converter esse desenho num bordado e partilhá-lo com os membros do Clube, e só me lembrava dessa atmosfera de noite a cair, luzes a acender, o ar um pouco menos quente, mas ainda carregado de humidade. E foi disso que me lembrei enquanto ia bordando a paisagem, uma paisagem da minha juventude, revisitada e cheia de elementos novos, que testemunham o grande crescimento de que Macau foi palco.

O bordado dá-me tempo para pensar, para relembrar, para voltar a sentir, e isso é muito bom.

11 Jun ’15

While waiting

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A quick update on the fundraiser in memory of our son: THANK YOU. We have now doubled our initial goal, and it’s all thanks to you. Please keep helping us by sharing the link to the campaign’s page (http://www.airdesignstudio.com/daniel) and donating, if you can.

Last Tuesday, I got to my bus stop and learned that it would be another eight minutes until my bus arrived. My first and immediate reaction was to reach for my phone, for some mindless browsing. But my hand got my sketchbook before, and so I started a sketch of the view from where I was, something I see every weekday it became banal a while ago.

There’s this thing that happens when we become accustomed to what we see around us: we stop noticing. We don’t notice when those beautiful, hand painted tiles were ripped from the façade (a sad phenomenon here in Lisbon!); we don’t notice when a shop permanently closes. We don’t notice the gradual passage of time, and the turns that the things around us take, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst.

We only notice when the change is big, either within us, or around us.

What cures me from the not noticing syndrome is sketching. Because when I’m sketching I look at lines, at how and where they intersect. I compare what my brain believes is correct and what my eyes see – most often, the two do not coincide.

And so I sketch.

On this post, there are several sketches on my sketchbook, all of them made while waiting for something. They are all quick sketches, specially those with people (because people move). And looking at them, I realize that waiting does not need to be wasted time. Actually, it can become something, a moment here and there that are stolen to improve my skills. And to notice.

How about you? What do you do when you are forced to wait?

Antes de mais, quero fazer uma actualização relativamente à campanha de angariação de donativos em memória do nosso bebé Daniel. MUITO OBRIGADA A TODOS. Hoje atingimos o dobro do nosso objectivo inicial, e é tudo graças à vossa ajuda. Por favor continuem a partilhar o link da página da campanha (http://www.airdesignstudio.com/daniel) e, se possível, façam um donativo (as instruções estão lá todas). OBRIGADA!

Esta terça-feira, ao chegar à minha paragem de autocarro vi que teria de esperar oito minutos até à chegada do próximo veículo. A minha primeira reacção foi procurar o telefone, para um pouco de navegação de cérebro desligado. Mas a minha mão, às escuras dentro da carteira, agarrou o meu bloco de desenhos, e trouxe-o para a luz do dia. Comecei então um desenho rápido sobre o que via à minha volta, uma vista banal por se repetir diariamente.

Há algo que acontece connosco quando nos habituamos àquilo que vemos: deixamos de reparar. Estratégia do cérebro para navegar economicamente a realidade, imagino eu, deixamos de notar a degradação gradual dos edifícios que nos rodeiam, não nos apercebemos dos azulejos lindos que já lá não estão e que foram arrancados por gente interessada em vendê-los aos turistas e ganhar uns cobres. Não notamos a retrosaria que fechou, ou a banca de fruta que já lá não está.

Só voltamos a reparar quando há uma mudança grande, seja dentro de nós, seja no ambiente que nos rodeia.

O meu antídoto para o síndroma de não reparar é desenhar o que me rodeia. Com a caneta na mão, em vez de olhar para o conjunto, olho para o detalhe: como e onde se intersectam aquelas linhas? Desenhar é um exercício em ignorar aquilo que o cérebro acha que é verdade e valorizar aquilo que os olhos vêem.

Por isso, desenho para recordar.

Neste post estão vários desenhos feitos enquanto esperava por algo. São todos desenhos rápidos, até porque, como é sabido, as pessoas mexem-se. Olhando para eles vejo que as esperas não precisam de ser tempo perdido, pelo contrário: podem tornar-se tempo útil para melhorar as minhas habilidades, para exercitar o olhar.

E o meu caro leitor? Como encara os momentos em que tem forçosamente de esperar?

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19 Jun ’12

ICON7, the illustration conference

Last weekend I attended ICON7, the illustration conference that took place in Providence, Rhode Island. There is so much information to process that I still feel difficulty in putting everything into words. I felt very inspired by the stories told, specially the case of Idiot´s Books (check them out, they were gracious and funny, informative and inspiring). And Matt Groening and Lynda Barry´s talk was probably one of the best hours of live entertainment I have had in a very long time.

In just a few days, I met so many of the voices I have heard in podcasts like “Escape from illustration Island” and “Your dreams my nightmares”, by Thomas James and Sam Weber, respectively. I put faces on names, met new people and – most important – never had to explain what my job is (What? You draw pictures for a living?).

Now, I´m ready to get back to work!

21 Mar ’12

When there´s no “instagraming”

Sometimes, there´s nothing like the good old pre-instagram days when the way to register something was to sketch it and the way to share it was not immediate.

I love sketching instead of photographing, specially when I´m travelling alone. It takes up a bit of time and it´s best not to feel there´s someone waiting for me to finish. Naps, for instance, are a wonderful opportunity.

See more sketches here.

7 Feb ’12

At the beach

Last weekend we went to the beach on the Caribbean coast. While waiting for the scuba divers to return, I looked around, found some corals and sea treasures to sketch.

Have a good week!

30 Dec ’11

To end the year in good fashion…

…issue 19 of “We´re in Panama!” is here! This month we escaped the tropics and went skiing on the Colorado Mountains. It was a very abrupt change! Read more about it here and then visit the zine´s facebook page and like it.

Have a wonderful, happy, joyful 2012!

See you next year! (or next week 😉 )

29 Nov ’11

Issue 18 is out!

This month´s issue of “We´re in Panama!” is all about the fiestas patrias. Instead of having an independence day, Panamanians do it big and have a month long with several festivities, two independences included.

Download it here and like it on facebook too!

28 Nov ’11

Doodles

We´re enjoying a public holiday here as Panamá´s Independence from Spain (1821) is celebrated, so I´m just stopping by to leave you a spread from my sketchbook. Some of these doodles will probably be used in an upcoming project.

Have a wonderful week!

11 Oct ’11

Waiting

When I know I am set up for some waiting time, I bring something to keep me occupied. Mostly, work, some ongoing illustration or knitting project, or my plain old graphic diary.

Pages turn out as they do – composition is somewhat a by-product of spontaneity. I like sketching without worries, just for the sake of it.

This spread shows some waiting time at a doctor´s office and my students, while they sketch themselves.

4 Jul ’11

Sketchbook Project 2012

My sketchbook for Sketchbook Project 2012 arrived some time ago. My theme, this year, is “Travel with me”. I found it very appropriate, because I feel that living in Panama I´m travelling all the time: travelling within the city or in the countryside, travelling here or abroad, life here feels like a constant discovery.

So far, I´m having a lot of fun with my sketchbook and I already took it somewhere. Can you guess which city it is?

While this sketchbook is still in the making (flickr set here), you can go ahead and peruse last year´s entry. Have fun!

6 Jun ’11

Sketchbook Project 2011

Yay! I just received a notification from the guys at Art House Co-op letting me know that my sketchbook for Sketchbook Project 2011 has been digitized and added to the gallery. You can now see the full sketchbook with their great quality images right here.

In the meantime, my sketchbook for 2012 has already arrived and I am looking forward to having time (and mental space) to work on it. This is such a thrilling project that I´m going to have to say “yay!” again.