Time goes by and life goes on!

Happy birthday to me hehe!

    Not much is going on in my life at the moment, apart from a beautiful girl i'm going out with, i still don't have a job, i have a cold since last week, but as i said before life is a collection of good and bad moments and i believe that if i'm going through a rough patch now, things will get better soon!

By the way the one on the pic is me, unfortunately the Vader's armor is not mine was just borrowed for the pic itself, The lightsaber was done on Photoshop!

Cheers!

Happy geek pride day!

Well i was just informed by a friend this morning( 25/05 ) that today was Geek pride day, i was unaware that we had a pride day, hehe, i mean it does make sense as being a geek nowadays is sort of in "fashion" right?!

I am and have always been a geek, and very proud of being one, grew up watching cartoons, anime, reading manga and comic books, I still read them, instead of playing with toys i collect them now, mostly action figures that are statue like, but mainly i have always stood by the stuff i liked because i never felt like denying who i was, and today i can celebrate it as another geek around the world hehe!

Cheers folks!

Where there is a will there is a way!

Kia ora,

Just when i thought there was no way and thought i would lose 150 $ bucks on the ticket to the big day out that i would not be able to attend, my new friend Kay, gave me an idea of how could i do it, that idea was nothing but a struck of brilliance, a bright flashy light that lit an entire huge dark room.

About 2 months ago i bought tickets to the BIG DAY OUT, a well known music festival that happens every summer in Auckland. Immerse on too much work between the 2 jobs i had on the month of December, i completely overlooked on finding me a flight to Auckland, and as it could not be different the prices raise up exponentially over the first weeks of January, and now it would cost nothing less than 600 $ to fly there and back, man that's way too much, and therefore i decided to settle for not going.

On the last weekend i was at Akaroa sitting on a porch, outside the Duvacheulle store and cafe, appreciating the amazing sight of the sun setting in between the mountains that once where the crater of a volcano reflecting the orange and reddish color on the waters of the bay, when Kay gave me the idea of "grabbing one of those relocation deals". Basically it consists of driving a rental car for free to it's original place, which in my case is gonna be drive from here Christchurch, over half of the country all the way to Auckland. That's a perfect Rock'n roll trip as I've always wanted to do, next Thursday i'll be getting on a car to drive for over 600 km, ride with the car on a ferry, see amazing landscapes on this country enjoying a great soundtrack which i'm already working on as i write this!!!

This morning i called my boss and sorted the days off i'll need, the car deal, the flight tickets back to here and got my license translated, so from today i start the countdown to one of the best road trips of my life!

Where there is a will there is a way, believe in that sentence folks cuz it pays off really well!

PS: the photo up top is actually four different pics that i "photoshopped" to piece them together, if u look closely u'll see that some clouds are not real, i made some up to cover differences between pics!

cheers to all!

New year, new look!

Hya folks,

    So here we are 2011, a new year starts, and i decided to come up with a new look for my blog a more clean one, hope u guys like it!
   With the beginning of a new decade i cannot help but feel hopeful again, isn't it funny that only because we restart the count of months on our calendars we feel like is a fresh start, i mean isn't it common to say "a whole new year ahead of u" as in this is a total new beginning, forgiving and forgetting the mistakes committed over the year past.

   The other day as i was sitting outside on the porch at late night, tired yet sleepless, with a full bottle of an ice cold beer, after a loooong 16 hour work journey between my 2 jobs, contemplating the wonders of this new year, up till when i stopped to think of the "bad years" i've had, only to realize that i never had a bad year. Honestly we all have problems and obstacles in life but 365 days of bad is way too much for a person alone. Companies , industries, crops, farms, and so on have bad years, if you consider to compare with other years that profit wise were better, but us we go through a few bad things in a year, but there is always good things to look forward to right?! At least i would like to think so, and from this i send my best wishes for a great year in general for all of those that have the hope for it, specially those that have not had much luck over 2010.

latest facts of me life:

I changed the look of the blog cuz i thought it would be nice to start the year with something special;

Finally done working on of the jobs, which means that i have a normal life again;

Just finish to re-read Harry Potter and the deathly hallows, and it's really a great book to my view!

The drawing above is based on the book/movie by Steig Larsson "The girl with the dragon tattoo"

The naked Chef!

Hello to all, what's up?!

I Had a pretty good weekend, Lately i've been in a such a great mood for the fact that it seems that things are finally turning up to the way i want them to be, i'm truly enjoying the company of me flat mates, the house and all, got a new job and this one as a proper chef, making more money with that and spending less than what i was spending before, which means more money for me, i finally found time to finish the x-mas illustration for They Draw and cook, and already got an email from Nate saying that he got my email, so for now i just have to wait till i see my illustration there, as for showing you guys, over here, i'll leave for the 24 of this month, cuz it's a x-mas recipe right!

U know how Jamie Oliver use to call himself the naked Chef?! Since pretty much then i've had the idea of doing a pic like this one above (which i know that by now there r many like this), and finally i got around to do it. I had just come from a little bike ride, and i was starving, so to get something going before i started my shower, i chopped up some onions to season and cook some white rice, and decided to do this pic, hehe!

To finish it off, i bought a scanner cuz being honest after having used the one on my previous flat i couldn't go back to simply taking pictures of my drawings, i get such a better quality from scanning them ya know, here's a little example of it:

So my advice is if u draw and like to post your stuff on the net, get yourself one, it's worth it!

And with my scanner fully operational, i've got quite a few drawings to scan and color for the moment, hard will be to find time between the new job and the old one haha!

cheers everybody!

High & low tides of life!

Living ain't easy but if u cherish all the good times and learn from the bad ones, u'll feel better about how you're passage on life is going. I mean seriously i tittled this blog "Art of Living" because i really feel like one that has learned ways to enjoy life as much as possible, but not everything is smiles and laughs, and there's no way u will ever go through an entire life without being affected by the bad aspects of...  huuh.....  life pretty much.

I see it this way, waves of fun and excitement hit you with a certain frequency right, but there are other waves filled with grief, sorrow and sadness that will hit u eventually, and it can only be this way, for if u don't know bad then how will u know what's good?! As a normal person i gotta admit that i haven't been having the best experience here in NEW ZEALAND, having to deal with all the fees of moving in here, getting visas and all, has made me a bit negative about the whole deal, i try not to show it too much, cuz i believe that thinking positively works very well, and thinking negatively can only attract more prejudice to yourself.

For pretty much the past couple of months, i haven't had much of a social life simply because i haven't been able to afford to have one. And even though i have enjoyed the people that i work with at the Antarctic Center, i 'm not pleased with not getting back in touch with actual Cheffing. I miss soo much working with an à la carte  restaurant and feeling the rush of making something with a beautiful combination of taste, textures, aroma and presentation, that working with something that's not that, yet again, is a bit frustrating.

But anyways today i had my "first day" at what's going to be my next job, and it is as a Chef in a proper restaurant!!! We had a dinner with a set menu for about 50 people, and everything went great,we did everything well, the dishes looked and tasted amazing, there was a professional photographer taking shots of us, and when being introduced as the chefs who cooked the meal to the clients we were applauded! IT FELT GREAT!

So Now i`m starting to feel like i'm back on top, a high wave of great experience has hit me again, and soon this will turn into a great part of my life, and as for the bad part about being an immigrant, i'm learning from it, and hopefully it's making me a better person!!

this is enough for now, for the next post i'll do a recipe as it have been a while since last i posted one!

cheers to all, and a good night(or day) ; )

BTW the pic above is a photo manipulation of me and my friends as kings of yore!    

Taste, everybody's got their own!

                                                                                drawing by Felipe Barros


What's up folks,


On Devinatart as now i'm a premium member, i can suggest for other artists that are viewing my art to make a critique about it, and i got a comment on one of my drawings today (the one above) where the person spoke about the fact that he would like to make one, but he thinks that for one to make a critique he should have the same or higher skill level to do such.


now now, my reply to it was to not belittle himself, taste is taste, besides there are so many critics out there that understand of the good stuff, but don't necessary know how to physically apply the concept in order to achieve the same result, got it!

There are food critics that know so much about the subject and yet they rarely walk into a kitchen to cook something, there are art critics that know the entire life of Leo Da Vinci by head, and yet wouldn't even know how to hold a brush.

So the message on this is, if you have an opinion of something and you want to share, then go right ahead, as my grandma says taste is like ass, everybody's got theirs!!!hehe!



Cheerio!

The geometrical shapes of art!

Hya there folks a tad late this week but here it is my post, and as i posted on my Facebook for the fact that this post is late, i have some tips on how to draw(which is the first of many to come) followed by a little recipe.

Ok so what i mean by this title is that there's always simple geometrical forms and shapes hidden within even the most complex of drawings, and if u want to get better at it the first thing u should be doing is taking notice of it.

First thing is remember when u were a kid and u would draw a man or a house with simple straight lines?! Believe me when i say that in that sense anyone, and i mean even Leonardo da Vinci starts the same way. That is called structure, at first you have to come up with a basic structure from whatever you're thinking of drawing because the basic will lead u to a final drawing with better proportions, plus structures so to speak are meant to be soft lines that when it comes to the end, depending on the style of drawing u have, will not show relevant expression and the main lines will have more or total strength therefore become=ing more noticeable.

Take the sketches on top and notice how all the elliptical, circles, squares and triangles form the body of the different characters on action moves, with a sketch like that u'll be able to have a glimpse of what the final will be.

Now these ones on top are more "final" sketches, but i marked hard some of the structuring lines so u can see where the drawing is coming from.This is a basic rule for drawing, the better u get at this the less lines u'll need to use for this first part, some artists reach a point where is possible to start the drawing straight from the main lines, what happens in that case is that they've become so comfortable with the structures that those never leave their heads, but i can guarantee u that on their free time they'll still do some random sketches with structures in order to keep them sharp with it. So as a tip i'll tell u to practice, with pictures, either photos from books and magazines, comic books, manga whatever it is that u like study the picture u choose and try to reproduce the geometrical forms in it, investigate the simple lines so u can fully reproduce the drawing, and while doing that u also compose a certain data in your mind from what u drew. 

Cheers!

Strive to better yourself!

drawing done by Felipe Barros

So here we go again, not much to say for now, work is good, i'm enjoying the fact that i'm back to having a reason to wake up, a couple more months and i reckon i'll be on track, doing all my regular stuff, such as biking around(once i have the money to buy my bike), drawing more regularly, going to the gym and a bunch of other stuff.

Is always good to keep in mind your goals and keep it going to ever step forward towards all things you'll set yourself to do, i def want to improve and continue to do my drawings, which has always been my main hobby and one of my ways to define who i am, pretty much the main one up until i started my gastronomy/culinary arts school which now is the main definition of me; a Chef.

Not long after i came to New Zealand, i found out that Le Cordon Bleu is opening a school in Wellington next year, and now that has become my main goal, save up money and go through one of their courses. For those that don't know LCB is the most traditional school of culinary arts there is, great names of this field passed by it, and i know that it would be quite a life changing experience to attend to any course there, almost certain to get a job anywhere around the world.

To finish it off, i decided on having one day to post something, once a week which will give me enough time to work on some material, this is only one step to discipline myself i'll start like this, and soon enough i'll be posting with more efficiency.

cheers mates! 

PS: the drawing above is a portrait of my lil' brother Gustavo Ramos