Spanish views from a small town

Yesterday, I turned my attention to creating another portrait. It's been a while, and it took quite a while just to get the underdrawing correct. Even so, it still has some lines that are not to my liking, so today I'll have to fix them before applying color. Drawing is an acquired skill for me; I wasn't born with the happy luck of being able to draw lines in such a way as to get them correct on the first try. I had to learn to see objects as intersecting lines lying at different angles. While it's not as necessary to be completely accurate when doing the underdrawing of a landscape, a portrait has to have the lines in their exact position. Otherwise, it won't look like the person you're trying to paint, and there will always be a niggling sense of something being wrong.  Applying color is much more easy. It's merely learning to see in light and shadows, and understanding their overall color. Highlights can be bluish in natural light, or purple. Shadows can ...

We continue along in the pandemic. Today the central government decides which areas and provinces continue into Phase Three. Our region of Galicia is moving into it. In this Phase, the regional governments get more leeway on regulating mobility and gatherings, and our regional government will let people in the four provinces of Lugo, Ourense, A Coruña, and Pontevedra move from one to another, though no one can leave Galicia nor enter it without good reason. My husband will be glad he'll be allowed to cross the bridge to the green grocer's he favors, across the river in the province of Pontevedra. Madrid will also be passing to Phase Two. This means that some museums will open, among them, the Prado. They have reorganized the museum, and closed off many halls. A trail has been set up for visitors, taking them before some of the more iconic paintings in the permanent exposition, such as Las Meninas , and both Goya's and Ruben's Saturn Devouring his Children and Saturn ...

I love art. I have always wanted to paint masterpieces. Unfortunately, I wasn't born with the talent needed for that. It wasn't until a co-worker, who was studying art at the time, pointed out that all I had to do was copy the lines of what I was looking at, that I really tried to overcome that lack. All I had to do was notice how lines converged, intersected, and diverged. According to her, anyone could draw.  I tried it. The tricky part was looking at something in two dimensions, rather than three. Once my brain accepted it and my hand stopping trying to poke through the paper, I was drawing. It wasn't perfect, but it was acceptable. I scoured bookstores for books about drawing. I found one titled Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain . The author said more or less what my co-worker had told me; anyone can draw as long as they train the brain to see differently. I followed some of the exercises and advice given, and I began to draw decently. I was no Albrecht Dürer, bu...

Turntables and vinyl records are back in style. Now people appreciate every little fudge made during recording that makes a record unique. The problem is they're coming back with current-day prices. I bought my husband a basic turntable for Christmas so he can hear some of the records he has been treasuring ever since casettes became universal. Along the way we have also bought old records at vintage sales. Mostly for their value as something from our childhood at first. Later, waiting to buy a turntable.  It's strange how music listening has come around to its origins. The casette once made the LP old and useless. You could take the music you wanted anywhere, and record whatever you heard on the radio, creating your own music list. Then the CD came around. One of the arguments in favor of recording on CD's was that the sound would be pure. The music would be perfect, as intended by the artists. But, in the end, we're all human, artists included. We like to hear the r...