I like to diversify even with my food choices. Life is too boring if you are eating the same thing all the time.
-A. de Barros, from Frivole.com Interview (2006)
“Butterfly”.
I haven’t written poetry in some time. I go through phases of painting, then writing, and totally into web design and practicing my style sheets. My current writing has been doing interviews for Scene 360, the latest article with artist Cathy Lo (co-written with Ms. Jenny Jen Jen). I haven’t really felt the need to write a poem, because painting helps me to write in visual form what I cannot express so well in words. Sometimes you feel things, and with a brush stroke it creates that sensation. Creating visuals is so instinctively natural to me, much more then writing. I still love to write, just need a good reason to unleash a poem. The last poem I wrote was about a year ago, entitled “Butterfly”, it was featured this month in South African magazine ITCH. Enjoy!
365 days later, I have painted something for me. Personal art with no strings attached, just painting and analyzing life once again. I’ve been illustrating for Threadless t-shirt competitions, which forces me to explore other themes to fit a target audience—and it is interesting and challenging beyond my comfort zone… although, I still enjoy making art for me, without thinking of the end result and who it is for. It was fantastic!
I did push my brain a bit on how to convert a Flash file into video. There are so many technical details and softwares out there, that what seemed simple took me a day to pinpoint a decent solution. I think a lot of softwares compress too much, and when uploading to a video community site such as Vimeo, they also compress… so the images tend to lose that crisp quality. I was stuck trying to determine if to buy SoThink’s video converter or Moyea’s. I went with SoThink because the interface is much simpler to handle—easy to configure the settings, browse for files, and in terms of output quality it was very similar to Moyea, however the file size was much smaller. I now made an account on Vimeo, I love their video display format, and I will host some footage of the making of my art. Enjoy. Click on “Continue Reading >” to see more pictures.
I’ve been quiet these last weeks, because I’m moving my studio space. And did I tell you that moving is tiring and hectic. It is! During the move, a national TV channel (RTPN) came to do an interview with me. I will share pictures of my office setup for this interview… I had to bring books back into the office, since most of my stuff was no longer there. I haven’t seen the actual footage, waiting on a DVD or to check to see if it airs this Friday on channel 2, “Radar de Negocios”, 11:30 AM. It was a bit strange having a big camera in the office and filming me. I guess my interest to become a filmmaker means being behind the camera and not in front of it. Nonetheless, it was a great opportunity to share my art and work in Portugal. Aside from this, I launched a collection of collages and sketches from 2003 or 2004, I’ve never gone public with this series entitled “Erotica” from a personal scrapbook. Something you may not know is that when I started doing art in high school, photomontagewas one of my primary techniques and interests. Hands to scissors and glue, no computers involved. And I did a lot of interesting collage-covers for school projects, and most of my teachers kept my artwork. I remember getting graded for the project and when it was time for the teacher to hand back the projects, all the other students received theirs, but I didn’t. So I don’t have much art from my high school days. At the time I was pissed off with this, and asked for the art back, but never saw it again. I get it now, and I’m flattered, but I still wished I had the camels in the desert collage, which I doubt I can reproduce and my mom always talks about it. I’d give it to her.
Update: The TV producer sent me a note today, saying the interview will air on Saturday, 14th of June at 11 AM on RTPN in Portugal.
My previous t-shirt illustration “Deer Hunter… I warned you” did pretty well on Threadless, one of the highest scores in a couple of hundred designs that week. I notice that viewers are scoring very low on all designs. A high score tends to be 2.2 to 3.0 out of 5.0, and to get a three-oh is like wishing for a shooting star and then seeing it hit your eye. My bad luck occurred when I found out that another designer had created a print within a similar theme. And I had even done keyword searches at Threadless to avoid a repeat theme, but nothing in the searches looked anything like my idea. I begun working on it, and only after submitting the design–was I sadly informed that a deer-hunter concept had been done and won. Oops, I guess I have to look at the full t-shirt stock (every single image) before spending two days drawing something. The other design had a Victorian, Gothic look– nicely done. Mine was more detailed with the whole family and dog–comical, yet this incident was sufficient to lower my score. I was upset that day, but controlled my temper and started working on another design. What I learnt from this experience is that viewers like my painting style, hyper-realist with rough outline marks… and that they like cinematic images, or things with a clever twist of fate. So I’ll to continue in that direction.
“Italian Chopped Salad” required that I setup a photo shoot. I bought vegetables and set them up on the kitcken counter, and I asked my mother to take the photographs as I prepared the salad. It was kind of fun doing all of this, because I normally search for images online or in books and then do montages in Photoshop to have a rough draft composition. I knew that finding hands holding a knife in a specific angle would be challenging to find, so buying veggies and posing with my hands would just be easier.
I’ve been exploring new themes for Threadless t-shirts. Since the community seems to like cartoons, and everything with a punchline or violent-comic twist. I don’t think my style leads into the comedy arena, but rather realistic daily themes and portraits. So I find it to be a challenge to design for Threadless. But I haven’t given up yet! I used to do a lot of dark themed artwork some years back, and despite having out-grown that phase… I do have an easier time imagining Greek tragedies and violent flicks. Why? I don’t know why, but I wanted to become a filmmaker and I always imagine weird accidents and things when walking to work… and I should be working at CSI(primetime television of course). This explains my latest illustration, “Dear Hunter… I warned you“. I took some snapshots of the making, so if you click “continue reading” you’ll see more images. The concept was inspired by hunters’ trophy walls, it quite impressive the amount of photos found online with walls of dead deers. I kind of feel like it is a macho thing to have a wall full of dead animals. And so I was thinking of how I could revenge at Threadless for the times I’ve drawn some nice things and gotten lousy scores. I thought okay, the deer is going to kill them all. Kind of like the finale of Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dog“, everyone gets shots… well except the dog in my illustration. The story goes something like this: The deer warns the hunter ‘don’t shoot me or my wife’... the human-hunter greedy and pretentious about filling his living room wall, shoots the deer’s wife. The deer cries a bit, and then steals a shot gun and shoots the human-hunter, his wife, and his kids. He looks at the family’s dog and feels sorry for it, and keeps it. Ta-da! I showed the illustration to my mother, she gave me these weird looks all the time… ‘Can’t you give me some feedback?’ (I ask), she says “That’s macabre!” My mom’s an artist, so I kind of pick her brain for some suggestions, but all she said was “That’s macabre!”…twice. I guess my message came across nicely. Enjoy.
Final scene of “Reservoir Dogs” (1992, directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi.)
Left: Photo of Rita Redshoes (C) WEARENOT!
Right: Almost Dorothy designed by A. de Barros
“Dorothy is stalking me.
The famous character from The Wizard of Oz has been linked in various projects that I have worked on. It started a couple of years ago, I made a Flash film for a client who made reference to Dorothy and her red slippers. And despite never really liking the story or film of The Wizard of Oz, today I’m much more open to it. The characters and morals of the story say something, probably more now then when I was a kid looking at the characters which freaked me out. The start of this year, I worked on an identity design for a wacky-fun project called “Almost Dorothy”, and then I heard about the singer Rita Redshoes and her new album is branded with red shoes and Dorothy influence. I knew right there I’d be conducting the interview, and it is up at Scene 360 (You can enter the give-away to win an autographed CD). I think I’ve just followed the signs, not specifically the yellow brick road, but signs in life… and it has been a positive journey so far. I’m now wondering where else I’ll find or draw red slippers on?
Screenshot of Breathewords Snowglobe Edition.
There is a secret link on the site, click the logo B in navigation
“Why Breathewords?
When I launched Breathewords website in 1999, every now and then I was asked what the name meant? How did I make it up? Although, the words “Breathe” and “Words” are quite English and describable, the name was inspired by a song from Midge Ure. Breathewords initially was an art and poetry site, and I wanted to express my interest in poetry and visual storytelling. Over time I took off most of my poetry… but the name still connects because it is about my view of life–to breathe life, love, words, art… The lyrics of song “Breathe” described exactly that:
Give me a taste of something new
To touch to hold to pull me through
Send me a guiding light that shines
Across this darkened life of mine
Breathe some soul in me
Breathe your gift of love to me
Breathe life to lay fore me
Breathe to make me breathe
(…)
Breathe your honesty
Breathe your innocence to me
Breathe your word and set me free
Breathe to make me breathe
Video: Midge Ure - Breathe
(The song became well-known in the Swatch campaign)
Mrs. Gherardini (known as La Gioconda to some) was bored with her stay at the Louvre. Always posing for you, for Leonardo and friends. Being famous is annoying—rigorous schedules… poses, smiles for cameras… to be a clown, to be immortalized… listen to the sounds of PJ Harvey which accompany the mood of my illustration.
I’ve just launched a new issue at Scene 360. Guests are Josef Lee (illustrative stories) and Neil de la Flor (prose poetry). Both features are literary—well worth a read because of the wackiness, fun content. I’m also preparing an interview with singer/songwriter in Portugal, Rita Redshoes. I don’t usually publicize guests before they’re featured, but since this is my blog, I mean journal (you know I hate the word “blog”)… it isn’t like the whole world is logging into my site but just a few that I can share secrets with. It is actually a bit more than a few, but who is counting? I’m looking forward to the interview because Redshoes is very talented, she composes her music and in Portugal to get somewhere you really need to do more than just sing. I think she has what it takes; you can listen to one of her songs on the YouTube video below. She’s also performed with well-known singer David Fonseca. And I just found out that he presented at SXSW. A small world indeed; some of the Scene 360 team members were down at the event for the Web Awards.”
Another design is up at Threadless. Please vote for it here. I have been an admirer of tattoos for years. I’ve never been able to ink one on my skin because I’m allergic to paint—coloration/pigmentation. And maybe due to my limitation and fascination with tattoos, I’ve sub-consciously placed them in my personal art and some work. I’m now conscious of this. I had the opportunity to work with a Hawaiian tattoo shop some years ago, and still today I speak with the owner and we have a fun time talking about tats and art. I hope to continue to include tattoos, bits and pieces into what I do, not in everything but some things. And I would like to work with more tattoo shops either web designing, creating t-shirts or just exchanging notes to learn about their art form.
“Blue Dragon Flowers” was created to be silkscreened on the left sleeve and chest of a black hoody or long sleeve t-shirt. I’ve added sketches and notes about the making of this design…
Hi, I'm Adriana de Barros and this is my visual journal. I will be sharing
behind-the-scenes images of my art and work, as well as tutorials, short articles
and links to useful or fun things.
I am an illustrator, graphic and web designer. Living and working in sunny Caldas da Rainha, Portugal. Subscribe
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