Martial arts: the Qin Na of master Zhao Da Yuan

Back in summer 1997 I had the chance to meet master Zhao Da Yuan in Beijing, and have a brief lesson on Qin Na. Zhao Da Yuan is the chief instructor of martial arts at the police academy in Beijing, and a master of Ba Gua Zhang. He wrote an great book on this topic combining his experience on qin na techniques with a sound biomechanical approach.

The result is a book entitled "Practical Chin Na", translated now in several languages, which is an excellent introduction to this discipline.

Unfortunately master Zhao did not let me take pictures or shoot videos (except one after the lesson, where we look sweat, dusty and beaten up) , but I recorded some of the techniques when we were in Shaolin, before we forgot all the sequences . Then recently I started converting my VHS videos into digital format and this is what I recovered:

(six VHS frames combined with Photoshop - click image to enlarge)

In this sequence, shot in one of the gym inside the International Shaolin Wushu Guild, Ivan and Andrea are demonstrating one of the qin na techniques we learnt, while in the background Elena is rehearsing what looks like Lohanquan.

It's the art: Clara down the hill

Sometimes the best approach to photo retouch is to start from a underexposed, blurry picture and paint a new one. Missing details will be completed with the good vibrations created remembering the joy of a perfect day in Champleve, a hamlet of Valtournenche, just outside the cross-country ski track.

Oil on carboard, 30x24cm (click on image to enlarge)

And painting in this mood is a fast, exact and immediate process where every brushstroke just naturally fits into the picture like a perfect jigsaw puzzle.

It's the art: gloomy Marco

Probably it is the long time I need to obtain a decent resemblance, but when I am drawing a portrait from a real life model instead of starting from a photo, I always obtain a sad and gloomy look, completely unlikely the mood of the subject.
Fortunately the only model I can keep still in the same position for a couple of hours is myself, although the result is an odd face like this where I look as if my cat just decided to leave this valley of sorrow.
So instead of taking it as a basis for a brilliant self-portrait like the ones of Albrecht Durer, I used this drawing to play around a bit with Photoshop and see if I could learn something about layers and colouring.
I think that Photoshop and the like will represent for the visual art of the 21th century a dramatic change in medium as oil painting was during the Renaissance, we just need another van Eyck to show us how to.
Pencil on paper and Adobe Photoshop layers, 24x33 cm
(Click on image to enlarge)