Allethea's Family

     I have finally finished  this week a drawing that my friend Allethea asked me a long time ago. I feel very happy to have been able to finally completed it.
     It was a deal that we made the two of us. I fell in love with one of her hand-crocheted top with shiny pallettes at its bottom, and I wanted it so bably that I proposed Allethea that I would make her a drawing as an exchange, for I wasn't earning much income yet at that time, and I wanted to have something from Allethea.
     I met Allethea during my very first year, here in Spain, at the Language School in Pamplona. She had in turn moved to Spain from her Brazilian homeland just a few months before I came. I remember very well because her daughter Maite was just a few months old, and she and her husband used to live in the 'Casco Viejo,' in the very old part of Pamplona, precicelly on 'Estafeta' street, the famous running of the bulls take place every summer.
     When we made this deal, it was at my opening of my second Art show, my second year in Spain, in the neighborhood of Sarriguren. I am attaching here a picture of the top I still have, and I am dreaming at this moment to wear it this summer again. Allethea is a beautiful crochet-clothe designer. She makes colorful knitted dresses, cardigans, sweater, mixing with current fashion elements, and she even makes clothes for children and babies. Please, if you are interrested, take the time to see her wonderful couture creations at www.alletheamattos.com
     In any case, meawhile I wasn't been able to accomplish the part of this deal, Allethea's family grew. I started the drawing figuring out how to draw Maite, Allethea's daughter, and trying to make her older. Maite, which is 'my beloved' in Basque language, is a beautiful little girl with light blondish curly hair, reminding of myself when I was a little girl as well. Although my friend Allethea wanted me to do te drawing with a particular minimal black and white style, I decided to make full colored portrait of her family, as to catch-up on my late due date. So, the whole drawing is made first by a light outline with a black drawing pen, then a light layer of watercolor on the skin parts, and finally an elaborated layer of colored dried pastels. The background is composed of free mixed-media gestures.
    It was my very first time only applying dried pastels on a drawing. I usually mix pastels and colored pencils. It was a challenge, and I really enjoyed the process, and knowing that pastels can make beautiful blur-effects as colored pencils made me really happy. It was also my very first time trying to make a portrait of a whole family!!! It was hard for me to squish and squeeze everyone in the paper frame, while keeping air breathing in the drawing. I think that at the end, it reads of a united and loved family, by the closeness of each one to the other. This feeling also makes me really happy and grateful.
     Families are so hard, even though wonderful.... I do not know anyone who does not have a family issue, and I am not going to start with this topic, because I could just write a whole ancyclopedia myself!!!! But, I am satisfied with this drawing!!! I am really hoping that I will be able to make more of this type of drawings. I owe one to Javier's family, for sure, and I am really hope I will be able to do one during the next couple of years. Hoping that one could keep me is mind for the future, please, if one is in need of a similar drawing/process as a gift to a friend or famil, or as a self-present as well...
     All the time I was making this drawing, I was thinking of my possible own one day... But again, it is so hard. Javier and I have still yet so many things to complete, to live for, place to go and see, and it is just not the right moment, even though at times I yearn so much to be holding and kiss my own child: I am already giving so much love to an un-existant humain being!!!
     Allethea and her husband Kinu wanted so badly a second baby, and it came to me Mikel, the Basque name for Michel. But Mikel is just not any child, he is a very special beautiful and handsome little boy. Till today, the doctors and specialists don't really know what he has. Allethea's family struggled so much, but I think that at the end, my humble opinion is that we all have a purpose in this life: to learn how to enjoy and love even in the most difficult and suffering conditions of life. It is a really hard knowledge and life process, and I know no one can speak off of something that another is living. But this is my mere perception. A child can naturally be very haapy, can love, and be loved, no matter what is around him or her.
     We all have different circumstances in our lives, and we all desire and wish for more, non-stoping, always for more and more... We all have dreams and hopes to accomplish, and this means that we are so alive, that we keep walking.... But no matter what, it is awesome at times when one stops, just for a second, to realize ''I feel good,'' ''I am good,'' ''right now, right here.'' Tomorrow is another story....
     For this portrait, I wish I could have done more, or done it before, for my friend Allethea... But the circumstances of my life as well...I too, I am living. I too, I have problems. I can choose to see what they have, and what I don't have in comparison... But I do think that all is relative, we are walking on a different timing, sometimes in parallel paths, but we are ultimatelly all unique to one another.
     This portrait of Allethea's family, at the very end, it is my desire for it to contain just my respect for her, as a Woman, as a Mother, as an Artist, and as for her Family. I am really hoping that she and her family can enjoy it now, finally. This is all I desire. I hope you too, through the following pictures as well.