Saturday, January 16, 2010

Buenos Aires - Watercolour



These are a few of some recent watercolour sketches I made while in Buenos Aires over the holidays. We went to the horse track, the Hippodromo to be exact. These Jockeys had incredible satin outfits and I had about a minute to paint them before they go on their horses and took off. I was taking a picture of these Jockeys and guards stopped me-saying no photos. I pulled out my watercolour set and started to work.



This is one of the riders as they prepared for a race. This guy is the second person in on the watercolour above- with one minute to work with, they are more of a suggestion than a painting. This was Dec 31st, it was 20 +C in Buenos Aires, just a great day, not to mention we bet on the last race of the day and won!



I sat in a little coffee shop near the Once district and watched people go about their week day, slowly painting this over the course of probably an hour, watching the changes in the end of day traffic.

The girl who is in the lower right corner of this painting is part of a group of people who collect all the cardboard and bottles in Buenos Aires, they go by the name cartoneros,. Mostly it is gruff weathered bachelors who push these immense nylon bags on rollers around town but this girl was part of a family who were scavenging. She stopped for a moment and looked around. I would have liked to follow these groups of people around and get to know who their life is, and I'm sure it ain't easy. There story is I'm sure about the suffering lower income people have suffered since the economic collapse.

Anyways, more paintings to follow.