Lugares que ya no existen

Esto son un par de dobles páginas de mi cuaderno de garabatos, el que uso todos los días, casi no saco a la calle y no tiene ni un dibujo del natural (como no sea de la tele), tan sólo bocetos de trabajo, experimentos y zarandajas varias. Como por ejemplo esta serie de imágenes recordadas de la casa de mis abuelos,  en la Colonia de Mahou (o "del Mahou", como solían llamarla sus habitantes), un sitio que frecuenté mucho en épocas remotas y que fue derribado completamente en los primeros ochenta para construir bloques de pisos.
En flickr hay imágenes tamaño legible para curiosos y aventureros.

28.08.2013
La semana pasada le mostré estas páginas a mi padre y las reconoció inmediatamente. Empezó a hacerme alguna corrección pero luego cayó en la cuenta de que mientras mis recuerdos son de los años '70, los suyos habían quedado fijados incluso 20 años antes, en la época anterior a mi nacimiento y a algunas reformas que yo conocí ya realizadas. Luego fue reconstruyendo todo mientras se maravillaba por no haber conservado en su memoria las imágenes más recientes sino otras mucho más remotas.



Places that do not exist anymore

These are a pair of spreads of my scribble sketchbook, the one I use everyday, I almost never take out from home and that has not even one drawing from life (from TV at the most). It has just sketches for work, experiments and silly things as this series of images from memory of the house of my grandparents, a place I used to go in remote times and that was demolished in the first eighties to build apartment blocks.

There are some images at a legible size (in spanish) on flickr for daring curious.

28.08.2013
Last week I showed this pages to my father and he recognized the places immediately. He started proposing corrections but suddenly he realized that, while my memories were all from the 70's, his had remained fixed even 20 years before, in the period previous to my birth and to some alterations that I knew already made. Then he started reconstructing everything, wondering at how he couldn't remember the most recent images but others much older.

Some grandma's fruit bowl

A quick still life taken in the kitchen some weeks ago. As usual, it was the accidental composition that took my attention and inspired me to draw. Then I fixed my attention on the fruit bowl (a humble, simple but beautiful porcelain piece that's been with me for many years, I love it so much) and some fuzzy memories of my childhood came to my mind. I was a child, the fruit bowl was there, over the table, and grandma was around but I didn't see her or recognize the house. I know this is grandma's fruit bowl, one of my grandma's fruit bowl, but I realized that I don't remember which one of my two grandmas.

So it goes.

Sketched Memories (again)

I often post several drawings and I've always wanted the chance to leaf through them. It's because of this that I've always missed issuu, before I knew about it, even before it existed. I'll let pass for most of my multiple-drawing posts, but I couldn't lose the opportunity of publish again this pages as actual pages.
The first image of this memories came unexpectedly to my mind and I had the sudden impulse of drawing it on the travel journal I had just started (it was summer 2004 and I was about to depart to the Dolomites and Croatia). Few days after I decided to start another sketchbook for my travel drawings and keep this just for memories. I havent drawn on it since june 2007 but I keep on taking notes. Of course this is not a finished work.
A little movie of the whole sketchbook can be seen here, and there are better still images here.

Click on the image to see it bigger.

A coat of many colors, yellow green on either side

My old drawings chest seems to be bottomless. Obviously I don't post every relic I find here and there, but from time to time an old drawing catch my attention because of... I don't know what, and so I get through the embarrassment of showing my beginner drawings... and well... ladies & gentlemen... my first published cover. It was made in 1983 for a magazine about puzzles, logical games and recreational mathematics. As you can suppose by the theme, it was a very very little magazine and they payed me a very very little money, but I was very very glad anyway. (And finally we knew that The Thinker, is actually thinking about some hard logical problem proposed by the magazine he holds in hand. So naïf...)
It was made with black, red, blue, green, sepia and yellow inks. I used Gillot, Brandauer and Faber Castell nibs, a different one for each color. I've never repeated again this technique.

A little bit of exhibitionism

This is my studio at home. First I used to do my pencil and ink work on paper and then scan it to color in photoshop. About one year ago I gave up to use paper and now I draw almost all my jobs straight on the tablet. It's better for productivity but I miss the touch of the pen and the paper. It's because of this that in the evening I hide the tablet under the white board... and fun starts.


This is my Little Partner (105x190 mm). It goes always with me: in the winter time I can put it in the pocket of my jacket. In the summer it goes on my fanny pack. About a 30% of the pages are my work diary (it's actually Success diary I bought in Munich at Kaut-Bullinger & Co, one of the best stationery stores I've ever known, a paradise for sketch junkies).


This is my Big Partner (150x240 mm). I carry it on my backpack (this means not always but almost always). I made it with the jacket of an old Quo Vadis diary. I fixed the rings (taken from another different old diary) with rivets. I fill both with different kinds of papers according to the technique I want to use. When I need new blank pages I file away the used ones. The holes are made with a Filofax punch.

Sketched Memories 6

Sketched memories 5

Sketched memories 4

Sketched memories 3

Sketched memories 2

Sketched memories 1

Me vino a la mente la primera imagen y tuve el impulso de dibujarla, era el verano de 2004. Una cosa llevó a la otra y aún no me he parado.