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By laura k, on May 25, 2013, at 2:00 pm We’ve had another outstanding day of seeing cave paintings, an entirely different experience that complemented the other two cave tours.
We left Santillana del Mar early and drove on back-country roads to the town of Puente Viesgo, to see the caves known as El Castillo and Las Monedas. The countryside here is beautiful – lush green hills dotted with red-roofed stone houses, groups of cows and sheep and horses grazing here and there. The rural routes wind through little town centres with the usual shops. I know Spain is suffering under severe unemployment, but we see no evidence of it. (Read more…)
By laura k, on May 24, 2013, at 5:30 pm Today we fulfilled a travel wish we’ve harboured for many, many years. We saw two sets of paleolithic cave paintings.
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The day started out a bit interesting, with an early-morning phone call that appeared to be from our dogsitter, scaring me (although it turned out to be a mistake), and a non-working shower. While we ate breakfast, the desk clerk wanted to tell us the shower was fixed, so she wrote this on a scrap of paper: “The bath this one are repaired. Forgives the inconvenience.” I have no doubt my Spanish sounds equally amusing.
(Read more…)
By dougrogers, on May 23, 2013, at 10:17 am
How to learn to draw? Make a mark. Then make another one. Keep going.
Yesterday’s post was a sketch from Impress. Here’s more. Popsicolor for savagery and simplification. Procreate for more precision and randomness. Pfloumpf cat. I love the vigourous, coarse, clumsy cartoon lines. Like a comic panel from some unknown seminal 1920′s cartoon.
Like I just drew this moments ago.
Filed under: art Tagged: cat,cartoon
By laura k, on May 22, 2013, at 4:30 pm Today was the second half of our Madrid art tour.
We were out early again, went back to the same local joint for breakfast (the counterman remembered what we wanted, which we enjoy), and were once again at the museum before it opened. This was Reina Sofia, the national art centre and museum specializing in 19th and 20th century art, and home to Picasso’s “Guernica”.
Finally seeing Guernica in person was, for me, a highlight of this trip and one of the most moving art experiences I’ve had. I was quite overcome – in tears – both at the (Read more…)
By laura k, on May 22, 2013, at 3:00 pm After our cheap pollo asado dinner, wine, and a shower, we had a new perspective on life. We woke up early the next day, had a little breakfast in a neighbourhood joint, and got to Museo Nacional del Prado – otherwise known as The Prado – before it opened. Our hotel in the Cuatros Caminos barrio is right near a big metro station where four different lines converge, and it was very easy to zip downtown.
The Prado is a big museum, not quite as huge and sprawling as the Metropolitan or the Louvre, but too big to see all (Read more…)
By dougrogers, on May 22, 2013, at 9:49 am Impress is a new, free drawing app. I think the developer decided to take some very few elements from Paper and write the code. Sometimes things show up like they are ‘proof of concept’, or like they are an end of coding school project. Either the choices made here are deliberately restrictive and made by a designer, or fetishistically driven to oversimplification for interface clarity.
What I said in my G+ post:
Always a sucker for a new art app, I downloaded Impress, which I think is a coding school year end project. Extremely limited in terms of tools, insanely (Read more…)
By neath, on May 21, 2013, at 5:52 pm
By laura k, on May 19, 2013, at 5:00 pm We left Ronda very early: we had to ring a bell at the desk and get the hotel manager out of bed to settle our bill. Poor guy shuffled out in his slippers, completely confused. We had to remind him we needed our parking validated, then remind him we needed to pay! Funny.
I had been up late blogging the night before, then woke up crazy early – a theme on this trip. I spent the wee hours of the morning getting directions and booking a hotel in Madrid, before it was even a halfway decent hour to wake up (Read more…)
By laura k, on May 17, 2013, at 5:00 pm The previous night, when we finally found the hotel, I asked about tickets to the Alhambra. We had read in the guidebook that only a certain number of tickets are issued for every entrance time, and going up there without tickets is not advised. As it turns out, every hotel in town has a certain number of tickets they can sell to guests. The hotel’s computer showed how many tickets were available for each hour. We purposely booked late in the day, both to avoid massive crowds and to give ourselves a break. Our friend at the desk also gave (Read more…)
By dougrogers, on May 17, 2013, at 10:30 am
Filed under: art Tagged: art, black, Cat
By dougrogers, on May 16, 2013, at 10:28 am
Filed under: art Tagged: animals, art, Cat
By laura k, on May 15, 2013, at 12:00 pm There’s been no shortage of things to do in Barcelona, we very easily filled 4-1/2 days, and we’ve skipped entire days of tourist destinations – Montjuic and Dali’s Figuerres. This is a wonderful city, full of history, art, architecture, urban villages, great food, shopping – everything that makes a city great. Almost every sign is posted in three languages, and a huge percentage of people speak excellent English.
Today we went to La Boqueria, the main market. It is said that there has been a market on this site since the year 1210. The present one dates back to the (Read more…)
By laura k, on May 15, 2013, at 3:00 am After breakfast in our room with our own goodies, we went into the old city – Ciutat Vella in Catalan – to the Museu Picasso. There are Picasso museums in many cities and I’d love to see them all. He is among my very favourite artists. The Barcelona Picasso museum was planned by the man himself, a gift to the city of his birth, and focuses on his earliest work – when he was a child, and then an unknown artist developing his own styles – and on a collection of later works he left to his friend and secretary, (Read more…)
By dougrogers, on May 14, 2013, at 10:35 am
Filed under: art Tagged: stars, Startling revelations, universe
By laura k, on May 13, 2013, at 4:00 pm What a day we’ve had. We had two incredible architecture experiences today, one of them among the most astounding buildings we have ever seen. It was also a long day. We are currently recuperating in our hotel room. Allan’s blisters have blisters.
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We took off early today, heading for La Sagrada Familia. We booked our tickets online the night before. If you ever go, this is a must, and a tip we discovered by accident. There’s no service charge or extra fees, and you avoid hours of queueing up in the hot sun. We booked the (Read more…)
By dougrogers, on May 13, 2013, at 9:59 am
Filed under: art Tagged: art, Cat, illustration
By laura k, on May 12, 2013, at 7:00 pm Barcelona is amazing. Some people suggested that five days here were too many, but we can barely fit in all the things we want to do – even though we are omitting one major tourist attraction and the most popular day-trip in Spain. (More on that later.)
I managed to sleep a little more than usual today, a rare gift, and we purposely got a later start than usual. After breakfast, we took the metro to our first views of La Sagrada Familia. This building, Gaudi’s great masterpiece, is truly unique in all the world. It is also famously (Read more…)
By laura k, on May 11, 2013, at 1:00 am Our only full day in Paris was mostly wonderful and a bit frustrating.
We started the day with a small breakfast in a cafe, as we like to do in Europe, as opposed to eating at the hotel. Watching local people come and go, I remembered how locals always stand at the bar for their little morning coffee, and how we did that every morning when we were in Italy. Later in the morning, after breakfast, I do the same, as one little breakfast coffee is not enough for my caffeine addiction! After breakfast, we stopped at a local store (Read more…)
By laura k, on May 11, 2013, at 1:00 am Our only full day in Paris was mostly wonderful and a bit frustrating.
We started the day with a small breakfast in a cafe, as we like to do in Europe, as opposed to eating at the hotel. Watching local people come and go, I remembered how locals always stand at the bar for their little morning coffee, and how we did that every morning when we were in Italy. Later in the morning, after breakfast, I do the same, as one little breakfast coffee is not enough for my caffeine addiction! After breakfast, we stopped at a local store (Read more…)
By dougrogers, on May 9, 2013, at 8:12 pm
Filed under: art Tagged: blue, Cat, moon, red, stars
By dougrogers, on May 2, 2013, at 3:35 pm
Filed under: art Tagged: Cat, pen and ink app, spirit, Tenuous, wind, wire
By dougrogers, on May 2, 2013, at 9:55 am What was the cat thinking? That was hard. That casually drawn, too large left ear needed an ‘explanation’. And thanks to Delft for pointing the missing essentials! Whew.
Filed under: art Tagged: can-opener, Cat, ear, hear
By dougrogers, on May 1, 2013, at 10:05 am Throw together more drawing, some Popsicolor textures… Seriously this isn’t done yet. I’ve taken a few days to think about the character, the expression… Something is coming to complete this.
Filed under: art Tagged: Cat, Paul Stickland, procreate
By dougrogers, on April 30, 2013, at 10:00 am
Dropped into Procreate for some colour. The charcoal tools do a great job here.
Filed under: art Tagged: ASketch, Cat, procreate
By dougrogers, on April 29, 2013, at 10:05 am ASketch is a funny app. I mean a bit odd actually. I really am not too fond of the twisty tool controls. Sometimes things can be stripped too bare to ‘essentials’, a too spare interface for simplicity. And sometimes reinventing things that work perfectly well and as expected just isn’t the right way to go. Procreate has the sliders. Perfect and simple.
Filed under: art Tagged: ASketch, Cat, more soon
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cartoon life: Impress
Impress is a new, free drawing app. I think the developer decided to take some very few elements from Paper and write the code. Sometimes things show up like they are ‘proof of concept’, or like they are an end of coding school project. Either the choices made here are deliberately restrictive and made by a designer, or fetishistically driven to oversimplification for interface clarity.
What I said in my G+ post:
Always a sucker for a new art app, I downloaded Impress, which I think is a coding school year end project. Extremely limited in terms of tools, insanely (Read more…)