Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Spain! (Part 6)

Back to Spain...

The evening after the metal workshop pictures were taken, my Dad passed out early and I was restless, so I decided to go out and wonder around to find some interesting pictures to take. Without comment, here is what I found:



Okay, I know I said without comment, but I just have to comment on this. The below picture was not edited in any way, that is the color of the street lamps. It's really cool, they have normal street lamps, but attached on the underside is a set of LEDs which project down on the ground. The really cool thing is that they are variable color, so depending on the day or time, I'm not sure which, they change. One day they were orange, then green, then blue... I wish we had these here.



Okay, moving on to bigger and better things. The next day, while I was helping the lovely Bobby Jo and her Mom Mary Jane figure out Lightroom (photo editing software), they were assigned to shoot an artist and they kindly invited me to come along. We went to visit Nuria Valles, a local artist in Sant Cugat. Here she is in the alleyway in front of her workshop.


She does these amazing oil paintings of scenes in Europe. They're incredibly bright and colorful. It was amazing to see her working in her shop.


She went through the whole process with us. First she paints the entire canvas with this very thin, streak-y paint and lets it dry. It has a very nice effect once it's dry and this is what she uses as her background to put the oils on.


The oils are like big crayons and they dry out over time, so each time she uses one she needs to trim away the dry bits.


The way she does her work is she makes a sketch at the place she wants to paint. She does this on paper she's treated in a similar way as the canvas she'll use. She just paints a whole bunch of paper with many different colors and picks out the one with the color and texture that she thinks best represents what she's seeing. Then, when she gets back, she puts this down on canvas with the oils.


Like I said, she uses amazing colors in her work.


When she's finished the work, she coats it in a clear glaze to protect it, then it's done. That's pretty much the whole story as I got it. We were really lucky that she spoke excellent english. It's so much easier and interesting to work with people when you don't have to pantomime to communicate.


Some of her work tools.


A lovely portrait of her in between poses for us. She was a great subject.


I spotted her shoes and had to take a picture of them... I don't know why, they just totally struck me as artist shoes.


Anyway, she's interested in getting her stuff into a gallery in the US. If you're interested in her work, or know anyone who could help her, check out her web site and let me know.

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