Hello, watchers! How are you all???

Life is pretty crazy and I was serious when I said I was going to take whatever the Dragon Year would give me in 2012. A lot of things going on an many many projects!

Happily I got a lot of commissions for cool stuff this year, and I'm almost finishing them all. The comic book I was making during the past 2 years (maybe more) is finally done and waiting for printing, so even if it has caused me a lot of pain in the process I'm pretty happy and excited about it.

A new illustration book is coming, it's about faeries and I'll try to finish it untill the end of the year. I wrote it  and one of my former students made the illustrations (and I have to paint it). But I have to run to get it done soon.

I've also got a proposal to illustrate another book, a digital book, which I intend to start soon too!!! \o/ And don't forget about the model series: I had to take a rest from it for a while, but it's not finished yet!

Soon you're going to see my piece to the association "Nuova Officina Onlus", they are going to hold an exhibition on January of 2013 for the "Day of Memory" – an event to remember the terror of Auschwitz. It will happen in the Archeological Museum of Sarno, in Italy. The exhibition is called "I bambini della Shoah" (it means "Children of the Holocaust").

And along with all this I'm preparing myself to be a mom (maybe the hardest part!!!! lol)! Yes yes, Dragon gave me a little boy! Lol, actually, *MarcFerreira gave me a boy.... But he is going to be born in the end of January (probably), so he will be a little dragon himself. Pretty exciting!

Hope you all like the news, see you around!


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Sometimes life can really work against you.

These days I'm felling like that. In a way it's almost my fault, in the other it's just life doing its thig.
I'm into a series of projects and they are all stucked. I love developing projects, my mind is always travelling and searching for new challanges and that can be a bit annoying, 'cause sometimes I can't deal with all projects.

I'm in the middle of a graphic novel project for the european market, and it was going quite good: I had an editor, I had time, I had all tools I needed. But then I made a very bad choice about the penciler with who I was going to work. The guy doesn't do the pencils. Simple like that. We are going to miss the deadline and I'm so pissed of I can even tell you.

FIRST TIP: choose wisely the ones you'll work with. It's not in your hands your reputation, but in theirs too.

Then I have a child's book project with another penciler. It was also going fine, but it suddenly got stucked. I just forgot about it and also did the penciler.

SECOND TIP: Focus. It's the most important thing, I guess. Use a notebook to note deadlines and ideas if you fell you're going to miss something. But keep the goal always in mind.

The other projects are doing fine but too slow due to life itself: you gotta prepare lunch, dinner, do the ironing, cleaning, do comissions... And I also have a Art School to run, which is going through a renovation now - and I hate it - and I have to deal with all that. In the end of the day I'm just dead to grab a pencil. It annoys me 'cause I LOVE to draw. I love to create. And I all I can do now is to write down my ideas and wait to have some time to bring them to life. People can say wathever they want, but YES, money is an issue. Money buy your food, pay your rent and bills. It's not something you cannot worry about.

THRID TIP: do your stuff in a particular order. Start with the things you HAVE to do, worry about things you HAVE to worry and leave the others for tomorrow. If you can do one thing at the time it's already good. "Patience" is the word here.

The year of the DRagon is being unmerciful with me. I knew it was going to be like this and I said I was going to accept things the Dragon way... A little bit hard, though.

FORTH TIP: insist. Be a stubborn and persist. It's the only way we can succeed sometimes.

WEll, it was more an otflow than a meaning journal, but I hope that you can learn something from my despare and also I can follow my own tips and get rid of all these weight in my back.

Hey, guys, sorry for asking that, but.... [link] please vote for me in this Art Competition - all you have to do is to click on COLLECT ME!!!!

Thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last week we had a very interesting conversation in the classrom: do you need a college degree to be an artist?
We talked a lot about that and here are my humble opinion, having in mind I'm an artist, I teach Art and I own an Art School.

Being an artist is much more than skills. You have to master three things: tecnique (form), concept (content) and vision.

Tecnique
This is something art school/college can definitely  teach you. If you're wishing to attend art classes, this is something you should expect to see. Oil, acrylics, pastels, pencil, charcoal, watercolour - name it. There are so many things you can lear from teacher - and other students- I can't even tell you.
Besides materials, you will be in touch with a bunch of styles, ways and directions to go. Composition, design.
A good art school or college can show you the way to express yourself in many different manners, showing you new ways to do old things.
Besides a lot of people say, tecnique is important for every artist, no exception. Picasso studied tecnique and drawing as also Miró did. In some point of their carrers they felt the need of  deconstruct all the things they had learned, but the truth is that they only could do that because they learn, let's say, the "classic" way before. Otherwise there was nothing to deconstruct.

Concept
That can also be learned in art school and college, at some levels, I'd say.
Art History: yes, dear student, you have to learn it. Yes, it is important for your formation, for you to learn about Art.
But sometimes college can be really tiring about concept: every single piece has to have something behind it. And that's not true. Sometimes I do a piece only because I think it's a pretty subject or I use the prussian blue with the gold yellow by chance, or because I feel it's nice. I don't want necessarily to make an impression or cause some kind of reponse from the audience. Sometimes I just want to paint.
In that case college can be very demanding and it creates a wave of fake explanations about pieces that wouldn't be necessary. Sometimes even freak explanations. So I'd be very carefull about that. Some say you have to base your work on someone's work, you have to use references, even literature reference. It doesn't make any sense to me. An artist creates. How can you be encouraged/forced to use references? In that case the formal study of Art has lost itself, I believe. In the need to be recognized like Med school or Law school, Art College lost the essence of their subject and tries to document, rule and classify everything.

Vision
You can translate vision as "soul" if you want. The vision is the artist. It is the five senses of a person. And that cannot be teached. In all these year I've been a art teacher (14 years now) I truly believe that. You can show some tools, give some tips and teach some tricks, but if that student don't have the vision... he/she won't be an artist. He/she might master the tecnique of watercolours beautifully - but there is something that will be missing.
Of course Art School and college can open your mind, show you new things that might make you think different, but it won't make you feel the world like an artist does, to see things like that. That cannot be taught. Otherwise the world would be full of Picassos, Michelangelos and Da Vincis. But they were
unique in their way of thinking and execution. As every artist is. But you can't learn that, you can only expand something you already got in you. But most of people cannot identify that tiny little thing that lies within and that's the problem. Unless you do that, you cannot expand it and you will be an incomplete artist.

Fell, smell, touch, hear, see, think - then use tecniques to turn all that in a piece. Using concepts, thinking about compositions, colours. Or even without thinking. That is to be an artist and I don't believe you can teach that.

So that's it: a Dragon Year.

I've been waiting for this one for some time. Everybody knows I love dragons: I design them, I paint them, I buy books about them, I collect them. They are the creatures I love the most and I'm not sure I can explain why. They are fierce, strong, they can be evil, they can be good, they can have all colours you want, they can live in our dreams, they can really come alive - it's up to you.

For the Chinese, a Dragon Year is an intense one. For the good and for the bad. In ancient China, the celestial Dragon represents an emperor and  power. Today, it  is the ultimate auspicious symbol signifying success and happiness. I believe for its nature this wil be a year that we won't control. It is beyond our powers as human beings. The Dragon will follow its way and do whatever it wants. And for us will be left the choice of living with it - take its risks, opportunities, learn from misfortune and make it better - or to moan and blame destiny or Gods.

And I've been waiting for it. I want to check if I'm prepared to take whatever is offered to me and make my best moves. And I will do it. Hope you all will do it too.

Let's change the world, shall we?

GIMME LLAMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! To the GOLDEN LLAMA!!!!


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I don't like New Year's  Eve much.... But I do love Christmas. It's the main holyday I wait for the whole year.

It's not about the gifts, not at all... It's about getting the family together, about hold the people you love. I wish everyday could be like Christmas.

I set my Christmas Tree and start to think about thing I can buy for those who I love, something really special not because I ought to, but because I want to. For me it's time to take a break and think a little bit more about those who I do care about. Life can be such a crazy rollercoaster and Christmas is the time I feel free of all that.

I try to be a good person the whole year, not only at Christmas time. I do believe in the Action/Reaction Law (not the third Newton's Law! I mean, that too, but not in this case!) : you get what you deserve from life based on your own action in life. But Christmas.... Christmas will always be a differente thing. It is Magnificent. It doen't matter it is Jesus Birthdays or a Mitra cult: it means something since a time we can even imagine.

For me it's special because since I was a kid the whole family was together to eat (oh, great food indeed!!!!) and have fun and simply be together, all together. I do believe in Santa, since he is the personification of all good things humans can create and he's also the spirit of this season, when we wish good not just for us, but to others too. Santa talks directly to your heart, and that's what makes him so ... true.

And my wishlist for Santa this year is a short one, I believe! If you see him or talk to him, please tell him I want:

1 - an Uzi - yes, that's right. It's always on the top of my list, but he never brings me that! It's all part of a plan, c'mon! He doens't get it! World will improve if I get on of those....

2 - Hiroshige book - of course

3 - Copics lol

4 - Margaret Mee book ¬¬ I need that!

Hum... and chocolates, mainly.... I guess \o/

I hope you all have an great Christmas!



PS: Oh, if you're feelling in the season's mood, please help my donate poll to get an upgrade to supergroups! Thanks!

PS2: comissions still opened!

GIMME LLAMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! To the GOLDEN LLAMA!!!!



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I was chating with some some students the other day and we are talking about Brazil. What to like, What not to....

One thing I really like in Brazil are setts for pave roads.We call it paralelepipedo and it is one of the longest words in Portuguese.

A sett, usually the plural setts and in some places called a Belgian block (often incorrectly called "cobblestone"), is a broadly rectangular quarried stone used originally for paving roads, today a decorative stone paving used in landscape architecture.

Anyway, it was used to pave streets surface (untill very recently. actually) and  it's being replaced by asphalt now. But we still have a lot of these kind of streets surface here, specially at small cities. And they are not used for decorative purposes, not at all... It is just the way it was, since asphalt is a very expensive thing for small cities to afford.

And I love it.

I love the sound of it when you're driving on it.

I love the rain on it, the way the stones shine and get slippery.

I love the way flood flows through it after the rain and the sound it makes...

And this is something i love about my country... Do you have something special you like in your country? Tell me tell me! I wanna know!



PS: comissions still opened!

GIMME LLAMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! To the GOLDEN LLAMA!!!!



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