Top row (left to right): a lone tree near Serpa; the Rio Guadiana emerges from fog in Mértola. Middle row (left to right): the cobbled streets of Coimbra; a beached boat in Cacela Velha, the terminus of our bike trip; a Seville pup mugs. Bottom row (left to right): every day is laundry day in the Alfama; Kerry explores the caves of Quinta da Regaleira.We began our vacation in Portugal sitting atop a wide staircase to an old church – fighting first-day jetlag by lasting until sundown – listening to an unseen man in the square below whistling Jingle Bells.We’d been dropped in Serpa with our wheels for a one-week self-guided cycling trek south to the Algarve coast, via river-hugging towns Mértola and Alcoutim, and with darkness and rain settling in our weariness trumped even an attempt at locating a place for dinner. But with opening-night jitters behind us, we left town on day two with a bag of lunch goodies (regionally-famous, locally-made cheese chief among these) on a round trip through the countryside, reacquainting our winter legs with the concept of cycling. In hindsight, it’s astounding how small our vacation started out – in comparison to the bustle of Lisbon three weeks later – but on that day we were permitted to gawk at local banalities like roosters, cacti and groves of orange and lemon trees (I thought they smelled an awful lot like laundry detergent). And not realizing the power of even cloud-peeking sunshine, I successfully burned the backsides of my biking hands – which in ensuing days turned nicely purple with doses of windburn and rain-freeze.Serpa seems a real working-class town, and it’s too bad we just missed its big Easter celebration. And the morning we left it was out-and-out lousy outside (chuva todo o dia, our hostess warned), but by lunchtime we had escaped the drizzle and traveled the highway to Mértola under improved conditions, ending with a rewarding switchback decent and a stop-in-our-tracks gawk at the huddled, clifftop town on the final curve. Poised above the Rio Guadiana, Mértola is a thin, cake-slice walled old town capped by imposing castle ruins – an amazing sight. We spent the entire next day wandering its streets, castle remains, museums and eating a cod dinner with a local soap on the restaurant TV. Restaurants always seemed to have a TV on, ones showing futbol were the best. The coolest thing though was an archaeological dig being conducted on a torn up street; we’d walked by it a few times before noticing the sideways-sleeping skeleton in the dirt. Cool and creepy.The ride continued to Alcoutim, situated on the Guadiana where the river forms the border with Spain. The small village made for a quick stop (one night only) but offered a nice end-of-day destination – and the following morning we waited long enough for its annual Easter Sweets Festival to set up, where we nabbed some prophetically decent sweets before the ride on to the long-weekend bustle of the Algarve coast. It was in a tiny, relatively untouched pocket of rural farmscape where the bike trip eventually concluded, and this area offered the perfect scenario to complete what was a more grueling adventure than we imagined. The family-run place we stayed near the coast had its own flock of a dozen-or-so horses and a 24-hour rusty-hinge braying donkey. For an extra day we based ourselves here and rode into neighbouring hamlets for walks on the beach and beers-and-toasties. But it also capped our cycling portion, and soon we’d have to shift to part two of the holiday.This began down the road in Tavira, nestled deeper in the tourist-centric part of the country. Here we based ourselves for the two-day tour we booked to take us into Seville and Gibraltar, which ended up being more than a tease than anything – fine enough to lay claim to witnessing both these fascinating cities, but the amount of travel-time versus exploring these locales was tipped heavily to the former, and the payoff, though incredible, was not enough to tip the scales. But if anything, it certainly cemented Seville as a destination to explore again someday. It is a city that can take days to devour, an eye-popping visual treat. Gibraltar is more a curiousity: geologically imposing, historically a strategic location for conquering powers but now a modern-day mixture of army/navy pomp and touristic excess that borders on the bizarre, as if the British military opened a theme park – complete with cliff-hugging rollercoaster streets, dank spectacular cave networks and Europe’s only native monkeys (apes they call them, but actually macaques).
Top row (left to right): an evening view of Spain from Alcoutim; primary colours rule in Tavira. Middle row (left to right): rooftop stork in Mértola; Lisbon's Océanario; skateboarders in the Alfama district. Bottom row (left to right): the caves of Gibraltar; architecture in Seville.Dropped back in Tavira, we were ready to head north and try a different part of the country. Leaving the following day on a pre-dawn train, we departed for Coimbra, a mid-sized university city a couple of hours north of Lisbon. An entirely different beast than the sunnier southern climes, Coimbra – the core of it at least, where we stayed – is grittier, urban and buzzing. The original walled city clings to an impossibly steep hill off the Rio Mondego, with the centuries-old university at the tip-top. Capital of Portugal in a distant past, the core is chocabloc with historical significance (summed up nicely by the difference between urban Coimbra’s “new” cathedral, from the 1500s, versus its stunning “old” cathedral from the 1100s). Kerry was nursing a cold at this point, so perhaps the best discovery we made here was the public market, an indoor expanse of vendors supplying breads, cheese, fish, fruits and vegetables. The city as a whole was the perfect back-on-the-horse plan of healthy food and never-ending climbing of stairs; steps winding their way to the university at top are appropriately labeled Quebra Costa (“the backbreaker”).Our final week was spent in Lisbon, quite possibly the farthest cry imaginable from our launch point in Serpa (now feeling months away). By luck more than anything, we procured amazingly central and convenient lodging, and from our location on Praça da Figueira we set out on our first partial day to get lost in the maze-like and directionally nonsensical Alfama district. Our first full day in the city was spent making hay of various locations’ Sunday free-admission policy – the beautiful azulejo (traditional painted tile) museum and the cavernous Panteão Nacional – before getting hosed of our euros at the overhyped Castelo de São Jorge, and subsequently both winning (me: mmm, delicious squid) and losing (Kerry: umm, glass-eyed sardines) at dinner.The next day we took the metro to the gargantuan Océanario – touted as the world’s second-largest aquarium – spotting in the tanks various rays, sharks, rockhopper penguins, sea dragons and one hideously monstrous Pacific Ocean sunfish (I liken this to a two-ton, somehow-still-floats granite boulder). On a roll, the following day we hiked to the Gulbenkian Museum, an impressive collection of goodies and art ranging from Egyptian, Greek and Oriental antiquities to portraits by Reubens and Rembrandt.The final pair of days in Lisbon were punctuated by onsets of vacation exhaustion, and our pace slowed a touch. The first was spent outside the city in the forests and shade of neighbouring Sintra where we explored the ruins of a hilltop Moorish castle with ocean views, the blue-blooded glitz of the Palácio Nacional de Pena (summer home of the now-defunct Portuguese monarchy) and the trippy, cultish grounds of Quinta da Regaleira – which I can only describe as what the Neverland ranch would have looked like if designed a hundred years ago. Our last day of vacation was retrospective, back in town with a two-dollar bottle of wine and falafel for lunch in a riverside park and almost falling asleep in the sunshine on the roof of an Alfama church.Out for our final dinner in the hipster Bairro Alto district, we hear a muzak version of Jingle Bells blaring through a megaphone. It was time to come home.My best photos of our trip will commence popping up on my Flickr page over the days to come, so the best advice I can offer is to check often. I will be, just to keep the memory fresh.
Kerry and I are back from our springtime opus of a vacation in Portugal (save for a quick jaunt to the Rock of Gibraltar where I cozied beside my new buddy here – say 'ello to mah leetle friend), and I have much, much photos to scan through. In the meantime however, consider this a big, fat, monkey-laden tease.
More to come ... soon.
Kerry and I are officially on vacation, so in our absence I present this heavy metal worshiping beaver. Part placeholder, part Illustration Friday entry – this beastie also handily represents the week's theme of heavy. However, in the din surrounding our preparations to leave, I whole-heartedly admit that I drew this some fourteen years ago, during a time when I was discovering the work of Terry Aislin and other great Canadian political cartoonists (I wish I could remember the specific artist that inspired this, but I'm spacing). More recently, I called up this beaver for heavy metal duty as the cover-rodent on an all-Canuck compilation CD I made for a friend.
See you in April!
For Illustration Friday's theme of leap, I was inspired by the squirrel: nature's finest mammalian acrobat. My street is lined by stately, century-old American elms – a literal playground for these amazing critters – and my favourite manoeuvre is the tree-to-tree leap during the frantic, noisy and much-entertaining squirrel chase. I've heard stories, ranging from the ridiculous to the comical – to the squirm-inducing – of rare moments of squirrel leap failure, but I have yet to see it with my own eyes. But if I can imagine it happening something like in this illustration, I may chuckle.
I built this piece fairly quickly, first by creating the tree and squirrel as separate silhouettes in my sketchpad. Merged in Photoshop and complemented with a simple wintertime colour scheme, I borrowed a texture photo I took of some wood grain to lend to the tree trunk. The path of the falling animal was done in Illustrator and added to the main file, and lastly the edges and snow were included using some custom PS brushes in eraser mode, cutting away at the blue background.
Photo Friday's current and far-reaching theme of art has me digging, not too far back, into the vault. Rather than displaying an sublimely abstract or bokeh-heavy piece of photography, the theme reminds me more of this literal take on the subject – a tidy vignette of a moment I caught last spring while Kerry and I were at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Resting my tired feet on a bench in a hall of gigantic Jackson Pollock works, I watched this kid – huge Pollock fan, it appeared – incessantly urge his parent to take this rigid pose beside this piece. Flash off, I snuck this snapshot off without the camera-toting guardian noticing.
Left: the victorious captain's log details the moment of enemy capitulation. Top right: let the records show it was a close battle. Above right: I diplomatically signal the end of combat.Local and international news services may not have picked up this minor story, but not since 1812 had Canada and America waged such a ferocious military battle as they did for one fine hour last week. And much like the former skirmish – but with myself at the helm – I pushed back an enemy Yankee advance in a victorious engagement of GoogleChat Battleship. Led from a secret command center in the swamps of New Jersey, the once-heralded power of the U.S. Navy could not successfully penetrate the Canadian defenses. Mission accomplished, the five-colour-with-varnish banner would declare, triumphantly across the deck of my remaining destroyer – if I could afford a banner of such quality and lustre.
So, what to do in the ensuing peacetime? How about four hours of cartoons and an all-you-can-eat cereal buffet – that's what the Cinematheque was serving up this weekend. Starting off with see-it-to-believe-it episodes of Super Friends, The Amazing Chan & The Chan Clan (featuring voice-work by Jodie Foster!) and The Jackson 5ive – and heaping bowls of Honeycombs and Froot Loops (a growing-up fave, now decidedly disgusting) – the marathon continued with even hokier episodes of cartoons featuring The Partridge Family (in 2200 A.D., no less) and Rick Springfield. While there were definite duds in the mix nearer to the end as the audience's sugar high subsided, it was worth it to endure for some Scooby-Doo and the ultimate guilty pleasure: a glimpse of some He-Man.
Clockwise from top left: wearing my cartoon marathon finest; sweet sustenance!; He-Man inspires Javier Bardem's Oscar-winning haircut; Kerry at the buffet.
Top row (left to right): synchronized swatches!*; glass car on blue sky. Middle row (left to right): living-room lamp abstract; our new dinnerware is making you sleepy; the bedroom bamboo. Bottom row: me, flashing myself at night.I didn't do it cuz' it's cheap / I didn't do it for the freedom / You know what? / I did it 'cuz sugar and milk is good eatin'. – Mcenroe, "Cereal For Dinner"It's Manitoba's inaugural Louis Riel Day long weekend, Kerry and her sister are girling it up in New York and Philadelphia – and I'm reacquainting myself with the camera, having only taken a few shots with it since New Years. And all the while I've managed to squeeze in a few bachelor weekend essentials: leftover pizza for breakfast, leftover pizza for dinner, Hockey Night In Canada with a brownie and ice cream, White Stripes turned up to 11 and watching a tape of The Big Lebowski while my inner dude abides. Yessir, the February long weekend has been the greatest addition to Canadian society since universal public medicare.
(* if you get this reference, then a gold star for you.)
Pronounced like it's written, I'm assuming – that's where a recent Jeopopolis visitor hails from, in Poland.
As both a statistics and geography junkie, it never ceases to amuse me to check the hit counter doohickey I installed on this site and learn the weird things that lure visitors. Inexplicably – or until I learned of Google's purchase of Blogger – the average monthly number of visits more than doubled, beginning in December. And I mention Google because the doubling is made up near exclusively of Google image searches (a touch frightening on its own, considering all I read about image theft in illustration and design circles). More amusing to me though, is the list I keep on file of countries where visitors originate; last week, the oppressive, Internet-starved regime of Burma/Myanmar became the 115th nation to be represented by a visitor to Jeopopolis. What was the Myanmarian doing here? Image-searching on Google for pictures of "mo" (crazy Myanmarians, always wanting mo') – hitting up my illustration of a blood-sucking mosquito.
But if you told me three years ago that I'd have visitors from Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, French Polynesia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Solomon Islands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen and Zambia (not to mention hits counted from the Faeroe Islands, Taiwan, Puerto Rico, Hong Kong and the Palistinean occupied territory) – I would have said you were pulling my chain. Not so much anymore.
Choose the blue krill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. Choose the red krill, and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
Har har. Drawn entirely in the forever-abandoned vector program Freehand – yeah, I'm still a stubborn arse when it comes to vectors – for Illustration Friday's theme of choose. Textures added in Photoshop. I'm no sci-fi geek, but I couldn't resist this reference. Click here for a bigger view, if'n that's your thing.
One thing that the stubble I let accumulate on my face any given weekend has going for itself is that it can make me look awfully decrepit. Pieced together with bedhead and my frumpy faded green hoodie – the most comfortable item of clothing, ever – and I may not be much of a specimen. That was part of the inspiration behind this impromptu diptych. The remainder comes from Kerry's avid – and growing – fascination with the boxing-related workout she attends more and more each week (so much so that she invested in this pair of extremely cool Green Hill gloves). So this past weekend, when the winter afternoon light was screaming just so through our living-room window, we posed for each other in order for me to craft this slightly-Photoshopped scenario.
Both photos underwent some post-production, primarily with the burn tool to eliminate background information (not hard, considering the focused power of the sunlight). My own portrait features added treatment, in the form of missing teeth and a slight shiner ("gross", Kerry winced, when she saw the end product on screen). Though no physical harm was inflicted in the making of this diptych, I cannot stress enough how similar the end result would be after an actual tilt in the ring.
Better looks at the portraits can be had here, and here.
