How are my cyber friends and kind Universe today?

 Here is the “Island of Spice”, as the Caribbean island of Grenada is known

Following my previous post, this is the Poster (on my working board) I was asked to design for the Grenada High Commission, here in London…  Grenada is an island country consisting of Grenada itself and six smaller islands at the southern end of the Grenadines in the southeastern Caribbean Sea. Thinking of such an exotic island, the first thought that came into mind was of course an exotic sun set. I wanted to express a little paradise, I wanted the viewer to see himself right there and then, in a very soothing, relaxing and astonishing scenery… (I apologise for the poor quality of the image, I think is a bit blur..)

In my mind’s eye I was seeing a place where everything was calm and serene where birds songs and wind-blown palms were the only sounds to break the silence

I know is difficult to appreciate in the images, but this piece was created primarily on pastels with many additional pieces of collage that I individually draw, painted (in watercolour and marker pens) and cut to glue onto the painting.

So, I begun to lay down some pastels…

“Half an hour’s meditation each day is essential, except when you are busy. Then a full hour is needed.” – Saint Francis de Sales

 My feet included..hahhaha… 🙂

Here are some of the collage components…

This project allowed me to bond so much with parrots and flowers, and the bright and happy scenery… I was so present in every minute of the creation process… Without realising I was practising mindfulness meditation…

I’ve got so incredibly attached to this project, that when the time came to handle it to the owner (a lovely lady, and work colleague), it felt like a piece of me was going with it and experience a bit of a loss…

Here are some more collage elements..

This parrot was not completely finalised at the time of taking the picture… I was working in this painting mostly at nights with only my iPhone at hand to take pictures, so I apologise again fo the poor quality of this image.

This parrot looks better, although the quality of the picture is still no so good…

The only requirement the client had it was to include the title ‘Party in de back yard’ in the Poster, painted with the colours of the Grenada’s flag (red, green and yellow), which I think it worked out very well… The words in the title were written on watercolour paper, cut out and glued onto the paper for a more dimensional look that unfortunately cannot be appreciated in the picture.

The poster was exhibited during the Grenada’s celebration party of its 41 years of independency, and I believe it was very much liked by the guess attending the event… To hear this makes me so happy and feel so grateful to have been given the opportunity to create such a fun piece…

“It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness”. Charles Spurgeon

Thank you all so much for taking a moment out of your valuable time to be here today… xx