Spanish views from a small town

"For Rent" are two of the cruelest words in any language. How can the store owner have given up all hope? How could he have shut down the best-known art store in the entire city?  Yesterday, I decided I needed some more pastel sticks. There were a couple of colors I felt I needed. I also wanted to see if the best art store in the area finally had sanded paper. This paper is wonderful for pastels. I am now finishing a pack I once bought online at a decent price, and I would prefer to find it in a physical store to be able to buy it whenever I need it.  I decided to make the trip to Santiago to see what was up. I hadn't been to the store in a while, but I still remember the excited feeling of walking in and seeing so much material surrounding me, begging to be put together into a thing of beauty. I also remember being shown the wonderful array of pastel sticks to choose from. Perhaps it wasn't as big as the arts store I had found in Porto, but it was more complete t...

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...