Bon Voyage

This is my entry for this week SoArtful Challenge. Jeanette gave us this beautiful lady in a Coles Phillips 1927 illustration for Life Magazine.

Mail to Brasília

This week Three Muses Challange is Art Envelopes.

My beautiful (and a little odd) city has completed 50 years in 2010. So, this is my homage to the capital of Brasil and my beloved adopted city.

Kid Actor

This is my very first entry to Art Creations Friday. I just love this little boy in his tremendous outfit. What if he was a kid actor?

Jóia

This week challenge in Three Muses is The Printed Word.

It’s quite an open theme, so I choose a simple and beautiful lyrics – Canto de um Povo de um Lugar - that is somehow related to the expression Greet the Day.

Jóia is the 1975 album by Caetano Veloso where I pick this song and it means jewel. It also means nice in a seventies' typical Brazilian slang.

The beautiful image at the center is the album cover and represents Caetano’s family: himself, his wife at the time Dedé and their son Moreno.

I dare to (kind of) translate the lyrics here:

Everyday the sun rises
and we sing
to the everyday sun

The afternoon ends, earth tints
and we cry
‘cause the afternoon ends

By night the moon is gentle
and we dance
worshiping the night

And here something about greeting the day by Og Mandino (1923 – 1996):

I Will Greet this Day

"I will greet this day with love in my heart. And how will I do this? Henceforth will I look on all things with love and be born again. I will love the sun for it warms my bones; yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit.
I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars. I will welcome happiness as it enlarges my heart; yet I will endure sadness for it opens my soul. I will acknowledge rewards for they are my due; yet I will welcome obstacles for they are my challenge.
To do anything truly worth doing, I must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in with gusto and scramble through as well as I can."

Lovely

This week SoArtful Challenge theme is Isn't She Lovely. Jeanette inspired us with a beautiful drawing by Arthur Jule Goodman.

She is indeed lovely, so I decided to post one more image in order to show you more details of this beauty.


Lady: Lucky Palm Free Vintage Art
Peaches and flowers: Redouté Flowers and Fruits CD-ROM and Book (Dover Publications)
Butterflies: Photoshop Brushes & Creative Tools CD-ROM and Book: Butterflies (Dover Publications)
Hummingbird: Google Search (beija-flor)
Textures: Freaky665 and Sheisprettystock both at DeviantArt.

Killing time?

This is my very first entry for the SoArtful Challange, which I discovered at June's blog. This week challenge is Time.

The background is a photo I borrowed from Laserandlight's blog.
The graphics are Dover samples or The Graphics Fairy freebies.
Quote by Irish dramatist and actor Dion Boucicault(1820-1890).

Speaking Numbers

I’ve made this photo collage for this week Three Muses challenge: Numbers. It was really a challenge because we don’t have a good relationship at all, I mean, me and numbers.

So, I pick this Nathanael West (writer, 1903-1940) quote, a bunch of numbers graphics from Google Search, which I altered and cut like cartoon balloons, and this beautiful old photo I had already (sorry, I don’t know where it came from) and voilá.

WrightStuff asked me about Gimp (yes, it’s a weird name). I did all my stuff using it and have no complaints. I choose it because Photoshop and all these licensed softwares are pretty expensive here in Brazil. As I’m a beginner why not try free software that has good references?

I live in Brasília and we didn't have even a raindrop in 104 days. Weather people say we will have to wait a little more. I know, it's boring to talk about weather, but I can't BREATHE!

Back to Nature - Back to Simple

For this week three muses challenge, Back to Nature, I’ve tried something a bit different and sort of simpler (it should be…). I've done a pencil drawing, scanned it, and then painted in Gimp. This was my first try in digital painting and it took ages to finish it (where the hell I put that old box of watercolor pencils?). Finnaly, I added an autumn leaves layer. Nevertheless, it was fun drawing again after twenty years or so...