Sergio,

Well I think it has all been said so I say ditto to the above.

I would like to point out how amazed I was with the sensitivity of this lovely lady and how she is almost porcelain like compared to the bravado of your normal pencil firefighters, it is wonderful!

:thumbsup: Beth

Sergio, you are too nice to me. I may be your biggest fan. It is nice to have lots of work and I think you will have so much of it soon we won't see you much here! When you are rich and famous don't forget to come back and say hello. You are such a talented person with a gift for detail. I think if I saw one of your paintings in person I could stare at it forever.

Sergio, I have to look that particular Shah's portrait up, the next time I am in Paris. I don't remember seeing it on previous trips, but there is so much to look at at the Louvre that I get visual overload.

I am always amazed at the amount of detail in the miniatures, especially of the post Safavid period and love to someday fuse their intricate application of detail into my own work.

Thanks for the compliment on the web site and Bachi-Bazouk. I have to admit, I was under the spell of 100 different excuses, to avoid working on him. I am at the final stages of cleaning up the painting and that seemes more work than the initial phases. Once I saw your work though, I chided myself for being lazy and went right back to work.
The drive to perfection is an insane love affair. For the longest time you can't stand any sort of seperation and then all of a sudden you can't get away far enough, because you feel you are going to suffocate if you hang around one more second.

Hello Lisa,

To become rich and famous is the dream of businessmen and actors.
My dream is however to realize THE PORTRAIT which will shine through ages as Mona Lisa!

:)

Thank You Elisabeth for the fact that you step by constantly to see my new works... In fact they aren't really many... one per year perhaps... They are all kind of technical experiences... still trying to find my way of seeing the world and my style which would be distinguished immediately... In fact I consider one of the biggest challenge of a painter how to find unity by keeping a diversified technical approach.

I can't believe the fine detail you get with pastels. This is brilliant. My attempt at pastels was a line no thinner than my little finger, I seem to round the edge in an instant. Did you really do this in pastels? Believable but Unbelievable!!! How do you sharpen them, they fall to bits when I do it.

Hello Ngaire,

I use pastel pencils,
and sharp them with 3 different kind of cutter (cutter, razor, surgical knife),
and put the pastel pencils for the night in a dry place and before working into an Owen. Also for one minute of work I sharp around 3 or 4 pastel pencils. So before starting I sharp dozens of them.

Oh Sergio, I sure hope you're joking about this! I think that Michele Rushworth should come around with some doughnuts to push through the hole. ;)

If you lived in Arizona you would only need to leave your pencils out in the sun for 15 minutes to dry them out.

I'm happy to see this thread come up again to see this painting one more time, it's so beautiful.

Sergio, thank you very much for sharing info on sharpening pastel pencils. what brand do you like best?. Your work shows exquisite technique, thanks again.

Hello Linda,

Was trembling when I saw your painting of figure on the rock!
Such a sensibility to the sea has to happen only in a place like Arizona...

Besides, (serious!), if I would paint in Arizona, not only I would not need to dry my pencils but I would not need to paint at all! I think when we are surrounded by such a NATURE we can just contemplate it and contemplate....