Out today. Nas bancas. Me. In it. On it. Innit. (oh and several pretty good writing type people... helps if you can read portuguese though, you english people reading this in Portugalândia)
Parabens, Paulo!
technorati tags: Art, illustration
January 31, 2006
blatant self-promotion
January 29, 2006
Chapter Eleven
Aunty Marianne's Stonking Chapter Eleven is UP UP UP. And it'll be me illustrating this one... give me a couple of days, gotta bit of work to do!
January 27, 2006
hookers on new ground
A little while ago (good god, actually, a year and a half ago, doesn't time fly when you're talking gibberish?) I noted the demise of a local stretch of road for hooker pick-ups, after the woodland burned down.
And joy of joys, I found it's replacement the other day, while happily avoiding a traffic jam, but this incarnation is bigger and better and fuller of saggy looking syph ridden pros. Along a stretch of road a kilometre or two long, girls sitting on top of paint tins and rubbish heaps waiting for their next client which are most certainly not in short supply.... quite lovely.
I found particularly poignant and lovely in a fairly not poignant nor lovely sort of way the way one bloke sat in his car and waited patiently on one side of the road as the hooker got paid and waved off her previous client. The new client then got the nod and he swirled his car around, hardly noticing that he had rush hour traffic to cross.
eugh.
this road would be a great subject for lixo lixo too, but the prostitutes are obsuring the view.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
January 25, 2006
Chapter Ten
A terrific heart wrenching
Chapter Ten by Jim is up!
Get thee there and read it!
(which is all you're getting from me today after i spent a day in bed with a bloody fever. bugger it)
Chapter Ten by Jim is up!
Get thee there and read it!
(which is all you're getting from me today after i spent a day in bed with a bloody fever. bugger it)
January 24, 2006
another little scribble that went right
i hate fashion
But I love clothes. I adore being dressed up in something no-one else has ever seen before and looking fab.
Things used to be "fashionable" for 10 years, not 10 minutes. Since when do people think that clothes are disposable? Isn't that repulsive?
So, why do we growed-ups let ourselves be dictated to by a bunch of money-grubbers who peddle to teenage stick people to make stupid amounts of money?
*sigh*
I feel better for that. Thanks.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
January 23, 2006
a reason for (yet more) cake
HOORAY! I'm a bloggie finalist in the best european blog category... up against my old mucker, zoë... clare reckons it'll be handbags at dawn. I reckon we should have a chocolate eating contest instead. whaddya reckon zed?
technorati tags: Art, illustration
January 22, 2006
and we have a new presidente da república!
Aníbal blah blah someting Cavaco Silva!
But, it was kind of expected. fifty something percent. Bit of a trouncing for the rest. But that was expected too.
But my favourite bit was Soares getting beaten by Alegre. HA!
Sorry. True. hehehehehehehe.
Snigger.
(if you're wondering what the hell these people are doing in the picture, well, it's a detail from an illo i did for an article in Atlântico last year... mimicking the strange and ghastly "people posters" so beloved of some politicians with really sad people standing behind the candidate of whatever it is. So there. Now you know. You'll have to go and read the article somewhere....)
(if you're wondering how i dare say the result before it's actually anonounced.... c'mon! you're kidding me!)
technorati tags: Art, illustration
the quaintness of it all
I don't know about anywhere else, but in Britainland, we've always loved to go away and come back and write about it. Or maybe go away, and stay away for a while, try to get a house built wherever we've gone and then write about it. And obviously, we've loved writing about it because we've loved reading it.
Which was all lovely... except of course the case of the really huge bestsellers like "A Year in Provence", the classic of the genre which had a terrible effect on Provence itself with visitors and immigrants from the UK piling in all in one go.
Then came the epoch of the reality show when it became supposedly interesting to watch people doing mundane quotidian things, which then evolved into watching them doing mundane but unbelievable foolhardy things like moving to a foreign country to convert ruins into hotels, having never run hotels before nor being able to speak the language of their chosen country. I keep catching these rather silly people on the telly on BBC not Prime and they enrage me for wasting our time.
And the thing these writings and tv programmes have in common is how they deal with the natives, making them all quaint and amusing, with diverting foreign foibles for us all to giggle at.
And I hate quaint (I also hate schmaltz... but hey, we can go there another day). Don't you hate quaint? Quaint sucks.
And then I felt compelled this morning to paint my favourite neighbour who does favours for everyone, knows everyone and has a kind word for everyone and never did the "oh, you're english, you obviously don't speak portuguese so I won't bother passing the time of day with you" thing... and he has the twinkliest eyes ever know in a man. Adorable.
Bugger it. I've gone quaint.
Next week: Schmaltz.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
January 20, 2006
January 18, 2006
I'd feel happier...
... being driven around by a chimpanzee than I would sharing a car driven by a young man, especially a Portuguese young man.
Last night, at 6.15, when it's still good and dark, I was standing in the car park gassing with my friends while we waited for our kids to be let out of school, when haring down the road towards the carpark, i.e. towards US and my ass, came a car doing what seemed to be twice the speed limit. We mothers all turned round and GLARED horribly inside the car as it screeched to a halt on the sandpile/bogswamp that is the carpark, where there sat two young men. And we glared and glared until it hurt to glare.... but then it occurred to me that to these nineteen year old boys (who were picking up a little brother from school) were being glared at by a bunch of what to them look like mad old women (hey, we're in our thirties!), i.e. why the fuck should they care if we're glaring at them... THEY know better. So we had to desist the glaring. Bugger it. Just wait till tonight. We'll have to glare harder.
I'm surprised that, even though the police and GNR seem to be being tougher on road behaviour, they HAVEN'T taken up my idea of humiliation instead of fines. Nothing would work quicker on the nasty little stink bags that are young men behind the wheel.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
January 17, 2006
precipice
Is it me? Is it the press and media who are over-reacting as usual purely for the benefit of their ratings and readerships? Or, what with bird flu heading west and no way to end the poverty that will precipitate its progress across the globe, Iran being run by a man qualified only in traffic management who wants to go nuclear, Iraq and US getting nowhere, warnings that if pollution levels abate global warming will accelerate because the pollution itself is masking some harmful effects of the sun, is there a tide of feeling out there in the real world that "there may be trouble ahead..."?
Maybe I just need a good night's sleep.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
January 16, 2006
earth to google
i don't care what anyone says about google. I love google and the google geeks.
especially when they invent things like google earth (which is now available in beta for macs).
mindbogglingly brilliant.
Like an enormous, life-like desktop globe on your...er... desktop!
I urge you to download it if you have a machine strong enough and a band broad enough.
breathtakingly clever.
I can even see my house.
And yours.
ttfn
That, if you don't know, is Mário Flippin' Soares. Flippin' isn't a real Portuguese name, by the way.
This Sunday we have the presidential elections with five candidates and garcia pereira and I've been drawing them all... quite alot. (I do hate elections of any kind because they go on far too long and with far too much hot air. But they provide me with more work, so I shouldn't complain really, should I?)
Mário Soares wants to be president. Again. (look, pts, I know YOU know this, but THEY won't, so bear with me)... Which is rather greedy if you ask me. He has already BEEN president. AND he's been the Prime Minister. Three times. AND he's a socialist (I love it when socialists wear the most expensive garb, don't you?) which means he should really just be redistributing the presidential candidacy pie. AND he's 81.
Anyway, I'm having to take advantage of the fact that I've just perfected my Patented Mário Soares Face this week, just in time for him to come third in the election on Sunday and bow out gracefully. (hahahahahahahahahaha ha HA. as if).
talking of caricatures, this is the other part of "socrates and the lion" from the other day.
:)
technorati tags: Art, illustration
January 15, 2006
pretty...ugly
PRETTY: Well, thank goodness for digital painting tools, cos I'm buggered if I'm going to go to the trouble of getting out my pastels/acrylics/oils/whatevers to record a lovely and strange moonlit sky. Instead I just fire up my painter software, paint it and go back to whatever I was doing. Lazy git, me.
UGLY: LIXO LIXO! A few new additions to the porcaria, including the delightful vision in the huge mud puddle that is the "car park" of our primary school. We're up to 25 days worth of rubbish. only 340 to go! SEND YOU PHOTOLIXICE to lixolixobot@gmail.com.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
January 13, 2006
January 12, 2006
this working business is great for making a living...
but crap for blogging. innit.
so here's a little something from the archives to describe quite how cold I am:
and Chapter 8's illustration is up (by andre) AND Chapter 9 is already written, up and waiting for your keen eye and clever clever brains. By Doctor Rob. Nutter.
January 11, 2006
not trying too hard sometimes works
and i get a little gift of something like this drawing from my ever generous subconscious... an innocuous part of a much bigger drawing I was doing today.
my oldest friend told me once that I was lucky I was so easily pleased.
I think we were watching some stupid advert at the time and I laughed at it, even though it was thoroughly crap.
But, she was right, anyway.
Easily pleased. Cheap date.
*********
Oh, and I met a fellow Lovely Anglo-Setúbalense blogger today who is as much of an internet junkie as I am. Bejinhos Beverly! ;) Now there's another person in the world who knows the truth about STRIPEY VIT!
a one-off taxi ride
I had another one of these the other day:
But then the taxista turned round and told me I had beautiful eyes.
Now, that hasn't happened before.
Later, luvvies.
technorati tags: Art, illustration
January 10, 2006
January 09, 2006
January 08, 2006
it was a bit bleak in here...
...sod minimalism... I put my blogroll back.
think it needs a bit of pruning... but hey...consider it a bit of a party.
January 07, 2006
the power of childrens' illustration...
...she says, using a photograph to illustrate her point.
Well, my point is that whenever I see the rays of the sun shining from behind or through clouds, I think "oh, that's God, that is"... even though I'm fairly ungodfearingagnosticatednotreallyintothatmonodeitystuff kind of a gal.
And I'm sure it has an awful lot to do with the illustrated Bible we had at home when we were kids, full of not particularly inspired but fairly photorealistic gouache illustrations from the nineteen sixties whose stock means of portraying God were the rays of the sun shining from behind or through clouds.
So, when I'm idly driving along and see this vision through the train tracks I just have to stop and take a photo and remember my illustrated Bible from when we were kids.
Just think about the books we buy for kids these days.
I wonder if they are up to scratch. (don't get me started on the state of children's illustration in Portugal... really, don't).
*sigh*
but you see why I had to slam on the brakes to take this photo?
technorati tags: Art, illustration
January 06, 2006
in the olden days
I was having a little conversation with my girls while in a traffic jam the other day, as we do most days, as long as they're not fighting in the back (I wonder if it would be legal to strap their little arms down... a bit like a straight-jacket for car travel?) or complaining about some wrong I've done them (but I WANT spaghetti for supper mummy) or asking me how babies actually get into mummies' tummies (i mean, really, I'm NOT getting into that one in a traffic jam) and the bigger one asked me if we had colour tv when we were her age. She's six and a half. This is a recurrent question of hers, as she enjoys in a schadenfreudic (new word?) way my answer of "well, only some of it was in colour, the rest was still in black and white"...to which shrieks of joy come from the back of the car.
The next recurrent schadenfreudic question came next. "Mummy, what other things have we got now, that you didn't have when you were six?" And we went through the list. Videos, DVD, game consoles, CDs, home computers, personal stereos, mobile phones, cordless phones (what do you MEAN, the phone was stuck to the wall?!?!") remote controls, internet, disgusting consumerist lifestyle (well? she has to learn sometime!) and all that jazz.
But I remembered one that I hadn't told her before.
"AND..." I said for dramatic effect, as much dramatic effect as one is likely to bother with for a six year old and a four year old who only cares about spaghetti and polly fucking pocket this week... "We didn't have money machines."
An audible gasp came from the two car seats.
"Well where did your money come from then?"
"We had to go to the bank.... and they were closed after 3 in the afternoon and on Saturdays and Sundays."
Another gasp, of genuine concern for people of times long past.
"But what did you do if you ran out of money on a Saturday?"
I didn't want to get into the question of chequebooks, subs, borrowing money from friends and beggars, slates in pubs etc. as the traffic was starting to move. It's a fiendishly difficult intersection to cross, so a girl has to concentrate or she'll be sitting there for half an hour before the selfish bastards let her out.
"Erm... well you just had to wait till Monday."
"You POOR things. You could have run out of FOOD!"
+++++++++
+++++++++
You know, I'd LOVE to see what would happen if all the electronic money systems broke down for a week (with prior notice to me, so I could withdraw a couple of hundred, obviously... it's MY social experiment, I can't be IN it, stupid).
technorati tags: Art, illustration
lixo-lixo!
lixo-lixo got its first (of many) press mentions today, in Tal&Qual. Hooray! and Huzzah! and all that. See. SEE? Blogs can change the world! Sort of.
January 05, 2006
January 04, 2006
well, it could happen
you never know, you MIGHT turn on the news and hear "the prime minister of portugal has been eaten by a lion at the top of a twenty metre plinth."
don't ask. :)
technorati tags: Art, illustration
January 03, 2006
beginning as I mean to carry on...
...the year that is. busy, that is. very. so here's a really ugly pigeon I photographed yesterday in Praça das Flores in Lisbon with my wicked new camera (a lovely little rollei). just for a change.
(there are more pigeon pics in my flickr if you're a pigeon perve)
(sorry, getting carried away with the extreme bounty that is my new fab little rollei and its pigeon capabilities)
(do you think this classes as pigeon pornography?)
(ooh, scary, evil, headless pigeon!)
(I wonder if pigeons would pay me for arty shots of their loved ones?)
January 01, 2006
are you ready? - part II
No more Mrs Nice Person.
Well, maybe just a little bit nice.
But, grrrrrrrrr!
That's me deciding to be a little more unforgiving this year. Of every thing and every one.
And better at self promotion. Here's one:
If you want to see a jolly awfully spiffing new blog header fresh up this morning at 1 minute past midnight go to see my accidental friends.
HAPPY 2006.
May it be better than 2005
and not as good as 2007.
And thank you all for coming.
In a nice way. :)
May it be better than 2005
and not as good as 2007.
And thank you all for coming.
In a nice way. :)
technorati tags: Art, illustration