Personal project where I was studying the design of three of mine characters. My stories often talk about families, how united and close they can be even when there is no blood relation between the people involved. In this artwork, I wanted to portrait the internal feelings of care, joy, and happiness.

When I'm drawing, I tend to listen to music, much alike tons of other artists through the world. One day I was listening to "The Arcadian Wild"'s song, "Blue Eyed Girl". This song, from where the quote comes, talks about such a profound, sincere and unique for of love that became the sole inspiration for this painting. The family in question are made of a man whose mother died, a woman whose previos marriage ended due to her inability to bear children and a baby mermaid whose parents perished. In a turmoil of sadness, these three characters manage to find eachother and against all chances, became a family. I tend to worry more about the gesture and the facial expressions of my figures than the anatomy, such as my drawings usualy lack the knees or the elbows. "Brown Eyed Girl" was a special case, where I tried to study anatomy as well.

All of my artworks are tradicionally made. I don't feel much confortable drawing on a tablet, so the paper is always my first choice, althoug I deeply admire whose who can use a computer as a medium to produce art. I started with a sketch made with blue lead, but usually any kind of colored pencil favors me. Then I made the lineart using china ink and a fine paintbrush. After that, I normally go to coloring with watercolors, but thinking about the quote in question, "In a world of black and white and gray, you paint something beautiful every day", I though it would be natural to first resolve the values in black and white and then trow a thin layer of color, wich I did. The lettering came last, made in Illustrator.

I think it is a pretty touchy image with a marvelous quote. People in general liked the result, even though some doesn't understand what's written (I'm brasilian, our firs language is portuguese. Lots of us speak a little english, but there's still some that doesn't), so I usually have to translate. I learnd a lot while drawing and painting this artwork. First because I don't normally study the values before working with colors, so it was a fun experience. And most of all, this was one of the most sinceres kind of love that I have ever put to paper. It made and makes me happy to look at this painting. I hope my feelings can also get through other people too.

Beatriz Linhares

Didi Mamushka threw herself into the world of scribbling due to the volumes of Dragon Ball Z, proudly owned by her brother. Fell in love later, in her teens, with the manga Inuyasha, which became her personal anthology. From then on it was a path with absolutely no return. Until her adolescence, japanese comics were her favorites, without competition. When she moved out of home to attend Visual Arts at Unicamp, she had her portfolio expanded. Found herself a new love, that is children's picture books, and redesigned her style. Finally, ended up in the universe of comics and from there on her fate was decided. Didi wrote and illustrated picture books such as "A Semente Rebelde", "Plantação de Vidas", and "Germana se sentia pequena", all available for reading on her facebook page "O Sabiá Matreiro". She also wrote and illustrated the comic "Enxerto", also available in the "O Sabiá Matreiro" fanpage. She currently lives a quiet life in a blue house, along side with her husband and pets: a argentine black and white tegu of 1,30m and two mandarin burds.

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