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Blog: ACME AUTHORS LINK (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Spain, Barcelona, Antoni Gaudi, Add a tag
Blog: ACME AUTHORS LINK (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Spain, Barcelona, Montserrat, Add a tag
Blog: ACME AUTHORS LINK (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Montserrat, Spain, Barcelona, Gaudi, Add a tag
Blog: Valerie Storey, Writing at Dava Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Barcelona, Beads, Art, Add a tag
Blog: Valerie Storey, Writing at Dava Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: A-Z Blogging Challenge, Art Journaling, Travel Journaling, Art, Drawing, Painting, Barcelona, Add a tag
Participating in the A-Z Blogging Challenge has been fun, no two ways about it--but it's also been very, very time consuming. I've had to give up a few of my daily routines and practices, and one of these has been sitting down to draw or paint every day. Which is why it's good to have a nifty keeper book like Quick & Clever Drawing by Michael Sanders.
I haven't owned the book for more than a year, but it's been a handy reference guide for when I'm feeling lost and falling behind in my artwork, like right now. Originally, I purchased the book to help me gain some pointers with my travel journal and sketchbook when I went to Barcelona last summer (oh, no, not Barcelona again, I can hear you thinking. Apologies for bringing it up so often, but it's a very interesting place!).
But back to Quick & Creative Drawing. Basically, the book encourages artists at all levels to just go for it. My favorite quote from page 5 is: "Drawing is simply making marks on paper." Yay! That's the spirit!
Sanders encourages his readers to keep those initial "marks on paper" simple and uncluttered, in other words, be quick; be clever--e.g., if you need to use a cardboard template to get the angle of a roof right, don't be shy, go get the scissors. And be very willing and open to "make mistakes" while you're experimenting. As he also states, rather than tell yourself, "I can't draw," say, "I can LEARN to draw."
Blog: Valerie Storey, Writing at Dava Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Barcelona, A-Z Blogging Challenge, Travel Journaling, Add a tag
Welcome to Week 2 of the A-Z Blogging Challenge. If you’re a new reader to my site, my theme for the month is “keeper books,” the books I can’t live without. Today’s selection is Frommer’s Barcelona, Day by Day, 21 Smart Ways to See the City. It’s one of my newer books—I haven’t even owned it a full twelve months. The reason it’s a keeper is that I used it last year on my trip to Barcelona, and I had so much fun I’m definitely going back!
The book is small but loaded, much like the handbag I used to schlep the book over every square centimeter of Barcelona during my two-week summer vacation. And in many ways, that handbag was just as important as the book, maybe more so. Before I tell you why, I first want to apologize to the Barcelona tourist board for what may be perceived as a negative report, but it was their very own site that alerted me to the fact that Barcelona is swarming with pick-pockets. Yuk. At first I didn’t want to believe it—I’ve been in big cities, thank you, I can look after myself. Then I read the warnings again on numerous travel blogs, on my chosen hotel’s website, and finally in Frommer’s Barcelona Day by Day. Travelers beware: thieves abound.
I was worried. I’ve never been a paranoid traveler and I wasn't about to start. All the same, I decided I had to have the safest bag ever made to foil those pesky purse-snatchers. I wanted it to be stylish, small-ish, and something that didn’t scream “American tourist on the loose!”
My solution was to go to a weapons site. Yes. Pacifist, timid me started scanning websites with names like “Gun-Toting Mamas” and “Guns-to-Go.” It was an education, mainly because it drew my attention to the reality that many women are a) armed and b) have good reason to be. Police officers, security guards, private detectives, women who live in dangerous American cities—all need to protect themselves and others, like it or not. And thanks to these resourceful sites, I found the perfect purse: tan leather, lots and lots of zippered pockets for things like passports and make-up, a slash-proof handle (very important), and a secret gun compartment (!). Once I removed the Velcro holster from the compartment, it was the exact size to hold Frommer’s Barcelona along with my travel journal and pencil case. Talk about turning swords to plowshares.
Best of all, I could wear the bag cross-body, the recommended way those scary blog warnings insisted I do. They were right—on my last night in the city, while being seated at a very fancy and beautiful restaurant, a young woman was robbed. It broke my heart to see her sobbing helplessly while her family tried to comfort her as they called banks and embassies to block her credit cards and personal information.
It was an eye-opener to realize the world isn’t as safe as it was in the past when I’d breezily ride the London tube home alone at midnight after attending a concert or play. It also got old to constantly clutch my cross-body weaponless-weapon bag like a cherished infant every minute of the day and night, but that’s the world we live in. It won’t stop me returning to Barcelona, or anywhere else for that matter. Besides, I have a secret weapon of my own: the purse itself. Filled with my pens, books, journals, camera, wallet, water, the thing weighs a ton. I’m sure it could knock out a grown man cold. The travel journal really is mightier than the sword.
P.S. If you'd like to read my post about my wonderful and happy trip to beautiful Barcelona, just click here. Thanks for visiting.
Blog: OUPblog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: gypsy, bull, humane, burlesque, Noralee Frankel, blacklist, Stripping Gypsy, siamese, catalonian, A-Featured, World History, barcelona, bull fighting, Politics, Add a tag
By Noralee Frankel
In late July, Catalonia a region in Spain outlawed bull fighting. The vote in parliament was spurred by a petition signed by 180,000 people. The burlesque queen and author, Gypsy Rose Lee would have been pleased.
What has a famous strip tease artist have to do with bull fighting? In 1950, Gypsy Rose Lee was blacklisted from radio and television, not for sexuality, but for her liberal politics. She had been a very successful moderator of two silly game shows, all the rage in the fifties. Unable to work on the new media, she left for Europe where she performed her strip tease.
In 1952, she traveled to Spain to make the movie with Paulette Goddard entitled “Babes of Baghdad.” (Unimpressed with the unsophisticated plot, Gypsy never bothered to see the movie. Back in New York, she dismissed it as “made strictly for Muncie, Indiana.”)
While there, Gypsy was impressed with the Barcelona Humane Society. Barcelona was the capital of Catalonia. The Society campaigned against bull fighting. According to Gypsy in an interview they were succeeding in convincing the upper-classes to avoid bullfights and cockfights by associating them with “unchic” behavior.
Gypsy’s advocacy on behalf of animals made her sensitive to issues such as a bull fighting. By 1950 Gypsy was vice president of Greenwich Village Humane Society. Gypsy worked tirelessly for the Humane Society. She enjoyed visiting animal hospitals where she felt the animals were receiving good care and her trips also lifted the morale of the staff. She was worried that problems with the blacklist might reflect on and hurt Human Society.
Gypsy brought back a gift from Spain. While in Spain, Gypsy adopted her first Siamese cat, Gaudi, named for a famous Catalonian architect. “When he came to me all he spoke was Catalonian.” Later she acquired her second Siamese in Italy, Teena. Later the couple had kittens. Gypsy quickly pointed out to the press that although she gave them pretty Siamese names, “they are solid sound substantial American citizens.” Given the blacklist, even the kittens had to be politically above reproach.
Fifty years after an earlier campaign, Barcelona has finally banned bull fighting, just as Gypsy Rose Lee wanted.
Noralee Frankel is the author of Stripping Gypsy: The Life of Gypsy Rose Lee and Assistant Director, Women, Minorities, and Teaching at the American Historical Association.
Blog: andrea joseph's sketchblog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: sepia, Barcelona, travel moleskine, Gaudi, illustration, drawing, Add a tag
I'm not much of a travel sketcher really. And, that's putting it mildly. I would love to have told you that I sat on the street and drew these, but I did it from the comfort of my armchair. Sometimes I long to draw the buildings and landscapes that surround me. But, I don't find it easy.
The thing is, when I'm drawing buildings and architecture I aways feel like I'm scratching around trying to find my own style. Up until now, I have never found that. A style that I'm comfortable with. In fact, drawing these little Gaudi buildings - even if it was copying them from a calender - is the closest I've ever come to it. Of course, the other reason for finding drawing architecture so difficult is that I cannot draw in public. Which is a bit of a setback.
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Barcelona, Presenting Lenore, Nothing But Ghosts, Ciutadella Park, Add a tag
Dear Lenore went to Barcelona last week for a wedding and visited a place so dear to me that I wrote it into Nothing but Ghosts. What a gift, then, that she has returned with photographs from her trip, and with memories that she shares with her lucky readers today. She's included, in her post, a Barcelona excerpt from Ghosts.
Another key Ghosts scene takes place here, at Ciutadella Park. A place I wish I would find myself strolling through again, and soon. Wings, anyone? Fantasies?
On another topic now, I fear I must make amends: Poor Sierra has been left wondering (due to my previous two posts) whether I have porcelain-faced doppelgangers in my own backyard. Alas, I do not. I fear my blog makes me seem far more eccentric (by which I mean interesting) than I actually am. In fact, I live in a small, quiet, and (to a fault) immaculate house with a manicured front and back yard, and a (shall I say it?) surround of celebrated gardens (the kind that people slow their cars down for). All bath tubs (that would be one) are of the indoor variety. I own no shower cap. I do not have A. Jolie lips. I wear my trench coats over clothes, not naked skin. But this is true: When I look up, I look for the stars.
All of which would be explanation enough as to why I shifted from memoir to history to fiction. The older I get, the more I like to make things up.
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: loss, marriage, Barcelona, Nothing But Ghosts excerpt, Add a tag
...I finally found them down where a wedding was going on, or had already happened, my mother sitting on a bench, my dad beside her, both of them watching this bride and her groom at the edge of a pond where the water was so still I could have sworn it was a mirror. I saw my mom pull a flower straight out of a tree. I saw her stand, take the flower to the bride, and bow her head. I saw her go back to the bench and sit down with my dad and ask him, "Would you marry me again, Jimmy? Would you?"
"In a heartbeat," he said, "and you know it."
"I wouldn't take any of it back," Mom said, and maybe I don't know how you put regret inside a painting, maybe I can't figure out Miss Martine, maybe I can't really save my dad from sadness, but maybe so much time goes by that you start to understand how beauty and sadness can both live in one place.
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: the Oscars, Jack Gilbert, Sven Birkerts, writing workshop for teens, Pablo Neruda, Mary Oliver, Barcelona, Stanley Kunitz, Salvador Dali, Gerald Stern, Natalia GInzburg, Forrest Gander, Add a tag
It was a movie weekend—"Slumdog Millionaire" at ten on Friday night, "Frost/Nixon" at 4:15 Sunday, "Mongol," courtesy of Netflix, in between, late Saturday afternoon. And then the Oscars, a tradition strong as Christmas here—a semi-glamorous meal delivered picnic style while the "barely mint" dresses float by. The Oscars always make me cry. Call me a sentimental fool (you won't be the first), but I like seeing dreams fulfilled. I like the idea that it's possible.
In between, I was walking about my humble abode feeling knocked-down grateful for all the book recommendations that came my way via Looking for Book Love, for all the passion that is out there, still, for stories that cling to the page. While I considered the titles that came in, I read essays on writing and craft—re-read them, I should say, in preparation for Tuesday, when I'll spend a chunk of the day in a coffee shop with aspiring young writers. Sven Birkerts, Natalia Ginzburg, Mary Oliver, Jack Gilbert, Gerald Stern, Stanley Kunitz, Forrest Gander, and of course Pablo Neruda will keep me and the girls company throughout a day that will also be spent collecting and sorting the details we hunt down with our cameras.
We'll yield to six exercises, which I've named the following way. I plan to write right alongside the girls, for I am not the sort of writer who believes she definitively knows. I'm the sort who keeps trying to find out. Who learns as she teaches, and as she goes.
The class in brief (should you wish to write along...):
Leveraging Involuntary Memory
The Perceiving I
The Hunt for Character
The Fair Release of Story
The Act of Autobiography
Vulnerable Fictions
Blog: How To Be A Children's Book Illustrator (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Disney, Dutton, Pictures worth a thousand words, Barcelona, Add new tag, feature interview, Philip Yates, "The Night Before Christmas", A Pirate's Night Before Christmas", anapestic tetrameter, Clemment Moore, Cynthia and Greg Leitich Smith, Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, Pirates. Johynny Depp, Santa Knows, Sebastia Serra, Sterling, Tenggren, Add a tag
The other is the new A Pirates Night Before Christmas, by Philip Yates, illustrated by Sebastia Serra (Sterling .)
I guess there would be one more, and that would be the classic A Child’s Christmas in Wales by the poet Dylan Thomas, but that’s because of the fascinating wash illustrations by the great Edward Ardizzone. (David R. Godine, Publisher)
But how amazing is that when the two quintessential (modern) Christmas picture books you can think of are by writers from your own tribe, in your own town?
Yates is a poet and humorist as well as an author, and in “Pirate’s Night Before Christmas, he applied all three gifts to a sea-yarn retelling of Clemment Moore’s “The Night Before Christmas.”
“I wrote the whole story by asking questions and putting myself into this workd that is uniquely the pirates,” he told Cynthia Leitich Smith in her children’s and YA literature blog Cynsations.
“That’s what writing successful picture books is all about — asking the right questions and letting the answers come in the most heartfelt way. “
How would pirates celebrate Christmas? Yates wondered.
They would be too bad and mean to deserve a visit from Santa come so they would need their own ornery ’sea dog’ version of Santa — and he would drive a marine sleigh pulled by seahorses!
The rhyme structure of Moore’s famous Christmas classic is anapestic tetrameter. It’s the meter also found in Dr. Seuss’s beloved Yertle the Turtle and Cat in the Hat, Yates said.
“It’s a breezy, whimsical, magical form that just flows beautifully and is highly contagious when read out loud,” he told Smith.
To prepare to put new language and new word pictures into old poetic forms, Yates steeped himself in pirate lore – ”the grammar, the slang, the history, the parts of the ship… ” he told Smith.
Actually composing the poem took him only two days.
He sent the ms out to five publishers and received offers from three!
He went with Sterling, who offered first, and Sterling pulled in talented Spanish illustrator Sebastia Serra, who lives in a village on the Mediterranean coast near Barcelona.
Children’s book illustrators and pirates have a special relationship with each other that pre-dates Disney and Johnny Depp.
Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth leap to mind, and so does Gustaf Tenggren.
Serra’s pirates evoke wooden toys, marionettes and bright-colored sea creatures. There’s something oddly menacing about them, as there should be — particularly that ’outlaw santa’, Sir Peggedy.
Serra’s illustrations for the book were created with pencil and ink on parchment, and then digitially colored.
Pirates — even cliche pirates — are never cute — not in the best depictions of them that resonate with children and the child in all of us.
Robert Louis Stevenson knew this. Long John Silver had us wondering up until the very end of Treasure Island if he was a bad guy or a good guy. We were never sure, not even after turning the novel’s last page, although he usually treated young Jim Hawkins decently.
As in the word portraits of pirates, pictures of pirates must include some minor key sounds – disturbing elements in the colors, details of the caricatures, or the ’spirit’ behind a scene (even when the Christmas socks are hung from the bowsprit with care.)
Pirates in children’s picture books can be poignant and a tiny bit endearing. But if they come off too cuddly, they’re just wrong! Children get this. And so do Yates and Serra.
Yates talked with us about the illustrations that appear in his book.
When you were writing, were you imagining the pictures in the book-to-be? Did you kind of visually “thumbnail” the whole work in your head?
Or did you mainly focus on the language of the poem – already sort of knowing that the stanzas would work as a rollicking, page turning, picture book experience.
A lot of the creation of the narrative involved inserting pictures in my head as I wrote. I knew the structure of the poem’s anapestic meter so well that I trusted the language to guide me on the voyage. The poem already works and has stood the test of time for nearly 190 years. Since the language was already there, I just had to pop in the images that worked best.
I immersed myself so thoroughly in the pirate world that the images came first and guided the language. For example, in the opening stanzas, I couldn’t hang stockings from chimneys so I had to research how pirate ships looked and where a stocking would hang and it wasn’t until I came across a picture of a bowsprit that I realized it was a perfect place to hang a stocking.
But with what? Well, I found illustrations of ships that used tar to make repairs and since tar rhymes with thar,the two came together in perfect synchronicity.
I’m not an illustrator, but the book truly was guided by the ”picture” first, the “narrative” second.
Were you permitted any kind of communication with Sebastia Serra during the illustration process?
The whole discovery of Serra was simply amazing and all credit is due my editor at Sterling Publishing. Serra had submitted a portfolio to Sterling and one look at his artwork and they knew he was perfect. All the communication regarding the artwork was done between Serra and Sterling, or Sterling and me. I never spoke to him by phone,
communicated by email, or anything. It would have been heavenly to talk to him, but sometimes you have to trust your art director and this was a case where I totally put my trust in them from the start.
Were you given an opportunity to share ideas about the art. (Or did you even want such an opportunity?)
I had very little to contribute since the art was so splendid. I almost think it was eerie how perfectly he captured the world I envisioned. But there were tiny things like “I want to see more seaweed on Sir Peggedy,” or “His tooth needs to be golder,” since this was boldly expressed in the verses themselves.
I also wanted more people of all colors and races because pirate worlds were pretty diverse, when you think about it.
Any insight into why your editor at Sterling selected
Sebastia to illustrate?
His artwork was modern, moody, had an edgy quality to it that was appealing. Similar to Lane Smith, I think. Lots of clutter, but I mean that in a postive way. Detail upon detail. He could also handle crowds of pirates in one picture, which, when you look at the illustrations, you can see this was necessary. They were also struck by the world he had created on his own with my language as the starting board—the monkey running around,
the fish hanging on the Christmas tree, the treasure map with it’s unique geography. It was all in the details.
What was (is) your reaction to his art for the book when you saw it?
I was overwhelmed, to be honest. As I said earlier, it felt like some telepathic thing had been going on between us. After seeing all the illustrations together for the first time, it almost felt like he had been looking over my shoulder the whole time I was writing it, it
was that spooky. But mostly, to be honest, was the feeling that I had accomplished what I set out to do—I had given him enough of this world so that he could go off on his own and expand it and give it his own twist.
At one reading recently, a parent came up to me and she thought I had done the illustrations and was surprised when she saw Serra’s name on it.
She said that the language and the visuals so perfectly meshed and how did it manage to come out without me even being in the same room with him. I was also proud because now he has several illustrator offers on his table, thanks to the Pirate’s success.
Have you done any kind of teamed promotional activity with Serra? Or are there plans to team the two of you somehow on the promotional circuit?
Well, Sebastia’s in Barcelona, Spain and here I am in Austin. He has been promoting it as best he can, but I imagine that it’s difficult to translate Clement Moore’s poem from English into Spanish without messing with the rhyme or meter in some way. I imagine the story can be told successfully in Spanish because the pictures are so great. I do hope to meet him some day and he is eager to team up again on another project, but right now it’s difficult for both of us to get together.
Blog: NOTE TO MYSELF (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: news, technology, science, Spain, cemetary, energy, Barcelona, solar power, Santa Coloma de Gramnenet, solar panels, mausoleum, Add a tag
NOTE TO SELF: NO GRAVE SITUATION HERE
The next time you visit Spain, you might want to take a side-trip to the Santa Coloma de Gramnenet cemetary located outside Barcelona, especially the mausoleum section. Although one can visit the dearly departed if one feels so moved, the real attraction is up on the mausoleum roofs where 462 solar panels have been installed to catch the sun's rays.
The energy produced with the solar panels, equivalent to the yearly consumption of 60 homes, flows into the local energy grid. The entire project is the community's contribution toward fighting global warming. The graveyard was the only viable spot to proceed with its solar energy program.
Read the rest of the story and photos of the solar panels here: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=6316047
Actually, this is not such a wild idea. Think about the possibilities of creating projects similar to this in mausoleums throughout the world. The concept might not appeal to all families of the deceased but it something to consider. Perhaps - just a thought - some type of wind power device could be utilized in a similar manner. Anyway, the citizens and the city council of the spanish town are congratulated for doing their part in becoming part of the solution to finding alternative energy sources.
nice drawings! :D
i like this style. you should print it as a real calendar. :)
I love Barcelona, I only went once, briefly but it is forever imprinted...these are as organic as his designs yet have a style of you.
(*)
I'm so glad that it's not only me that struggles with that. I might have a go at drawing some of my Barcelona photos now.
Beautiful.
I had the perfect opportunity to sketch in public today, but couldn't bring myself to do it. For me, it's an off-and-on thing, and the less I do it, the more fearful I become.
You have such a strong and individual style, whatever the subject and circumstances of the drawing. Always instantly recognizable as AJ.
Nice drawings! I keep saying I'm going to go around town and sketch some of the buildings but my shyness keeps me away. I'm gradually trying to work past that though.
I love your series of Gaudi buildings - please say you'll make a calendar, just like that!! I love Barcelona!!
I'm horribly self-conscious about drawing in public. I can whip out my knitting without a second thought because I know that it looks ok...I freeze about the drawing because I never think it looks good enough.
Hi, Andrea!! Not only are we both channeling Gaudi . . . we both own this calendar!! I was so excited when I saw that you had begun such beautiful work from the calendar. Your drawings of Gaudi architecture are exquisite!!
I have many more sketches of Barcelona to do to fill my sketchbook from the trip, but it is a joy to try and decide what to put down as a memory. . . there are so many wonderful ones. I would gladly buy a silver Vespa, a helmet, and an apartment off La Rambla. I hope to go back soon!
I like what your pen has to say too! Wonderful work.
Thanks, guys.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one! I would love to sit there and not care, but, that would take a whole load of therapy to get to that point.
Betty, me too. Me too.
Cheers, lovely people.