Category: Sketchbook

Café culture V jungle law

Posted by kp – April 1, 2010

On the left are sketches from a café in Neuquen; the right is of a print I really liked in a café in San Telmo (BA).  It described itself as a café for artists and literary types and this was a poster advertising a poets’ reading in 1983.  It was the perfect café: beaten-up wooden tables, a wood-beamed bar running along the edge and posters all over the walls.  Slightly at odds with all this were the fairly moody waiters, but then again it was a Monday.

Then on to the Iguazu Falls, vast stretch of waterfalls that descend through subtropical jungle at the Argentine border with Brazil.  Rich pointed out that you often find great waterfalls on the borders between countries.  Getting the sketchbook out there was fraught with danger due to water getting everywhere, so in the end my sketches came from the mostly good, occasionally hellish hostel we stayed in.   I love INXS but please, not again.

Some photos from the falls themselves.  This is the Devil’s Throat, a great cavity where water thunders down on all sides (that´s Brazil on the other side).  Standing above it and getting whammed by 82 metres´worth of upwards spray is really quite incredible.

There are butterflies everywhere and occasionally you’d come across a swarm of them feeding on an apparently unremarkable piece of mud.  Actually they’re behaving like flies but you still gaze on adoringly.

The air was steaming with vapour from nearby waterfalls in this part of the jungle; it made the lilies you can just about see tremor and fill the air with scent.  Lovely.

All creatures very great and very small

Posted by kp – March 20, 2010

The gorgeous grey Morocha, a poodle at the hostel La Bolsa in Bariloche.  She was once a street dog and had puppies after the owners took her in.  They had some kittens at the time whose mother wasn’t interested (I forget why) so they gave them to Morocha and she nursed them too.  She had the loveliest temperament.. all I want now is a poodle.

After Bariloche, we went to Neuquen, a lively and prosperous town which isn’t focused on tourism – v refreshing.  We were there to see some of the dinosaurs found nearby, including a reconstruction of the largest dinosaur ever found, the Argentinosaurus.  To the right you can see a T-Rex, to give you some idea..

Absolutely extraordinary.  And it was a veggie.  In Neuquen itself we went to the Museo Nacional De Bellas Artes (lovely turn of phrase, like fruits de mer) – below is a copy of a Pueyrredón, a celebrated 19C Argentinian artist.  To the right is the crazy lady who staffed the cloak room.  She was tiny, sported an enormous red curly wig, huge white 70s specs with accessories all over the place and sort of weirdest of all, was really unfriendly.  When we went back to the MNBA two days later, Rich remarked that the woman running the cloak room was ‘very David Lynch’.  I checked and indeed it was the same one, this time with long black hair, skulking in the corner frantically making a friendship bracelet.

This is from a dream I had a while ago about an Anubis-like blue dog with orange eyes.  I always meant to get him down on paper.

And finally, a grasshopper that somehow found its way to the centre of Buenos Aires and our windowsill today.

El Chalten (again)

Posted by kp – March 14, 2010

Some more of the mountains around El Chalten – I was so attached to them, I kept drawing them.  This painting I did on a hike; the spike is Cerro Torre, renowned for the near impossibility of climbing it and the controversy over who first achieved this.  The very top is covered in a cap of ice, which is not only extremely difficult to get a hold in but pieces of it might at any moment drop onto your head.  Also the mountain is nearly sheer.  I thought it was much more exciting than Fitz Roy.

Secondly here are the mountains to the left of Torre and Fitz Roy.  I was sat in a much comfier cafe for this one.

Kitchen in a cabana

Posted by kp – March 5, 2010

We’ve been staying in a little – well actually quite big – cabana (cabin) in El Chalten (see last post).  We’ve only got a couple more days in it before we’re cast back into backpacking world.. here is Rich working on his blog at the kitchen table.

Argentina

Posted by kp – March 1, 2010

Well it’s taken me ages but have finally uploaded some sketches from my travels on here.  I didn’t really have my drawing mojo on for weeks, but we’ve stopped in a Patagonian town called El Chalten for a while and with a bit of a relax, it’s come back.   Obviously I’m not travelling with a scanner, so what follows are rather poor attempts to photograph the pics with my boyfriend holding the sketchbook in direct sunlight.  Nor do I have Photoshop out here, so can only adjust the brightness a bit with the fairly basic editing page on Picasa! 

In chronological order… the balcony of our first hostel in Buenos Aires.  This was the first time I’d used my new Artist’s Grade watercolours so it was all a bit haphazard.

The beach at Puerto Madryn on the east coast.  Was being blown by a very strong wind and a lot of sand.

Random bits and bobs, including one of the long-distance buses everyone uses to get around here, and various people as they came and went on the Puerto Madryn prom.

My boy Rich with a rather long face, and the Andean mountain range overlooking El Chalten..

Striated mountains seen from the Los Condores viewpoint in El Chalten, if you look in the opposite direction to Monte Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre.  I loved these mountains.

Experiments with my new dip pen.

A tree characteristic of the lower levels of the Andes around here.  They seem half dead, though still lovely.  When hiking you come across whole fields of their blanched spidery skeletons.. I must find out why.

Wenlock Priory

Posted by kp – December 14, 2009

While in Ludlow I visited the remains of Wenlock Priory, in Much Wenlock.  Over the road there was a field of these beautiful orange, shaggy cows – possibly Highland cows?

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Ludlow

Posted by kp – November 30, 2009

The front room of our funny little wood-beamed house in Ludlow, Shropshire.  We are now pro fire-builders.

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And a doodle of Tony Benn, who we went to see answering audience questions while there.  The crazy dog on the left is by my secretly artistic boyfriend.

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Barcelona

Posted by kp – October 7, 2009

Sketch with my new Pentel brush pen of our friend Garret’s flat in Barcelona.

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Wanderings

Posted by kp – September 15, 2009

A self-portrait.. not a lot for the blog at the moment as have a bit of work on.

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enigma + rabbit

Posted by kp – August 21, 2009

A sketch of the most random thing I’ve seen in a long time.  I left our building – which is in the heart of Manchester – at about 9am on Wednesday morning, just as this guy skateboarded past.  He was completely nonchalant, like he was just getting from A to B.  I can’t remember if he was wearing shoes or not.. to clarify, the rabbit was real, looking very content in his arms, and that’s a pink clip in his hair.  People who are different or eccentric, who mess with the boundaries without caring what others think, are life-affirming to me.  It was a great city moment.

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