Art / May 8, 2024

Carnival in Rio

Casal se beijando. Ele é um homem branco com uma roupa azul com paetês e ela é uma mulher negra, de cabelos loiros e coloridos, usando uma roupa dourada e vermelha com paetês e glitter no rosto.

The Carnival in Rio represents everything that I love the most in the city: people on the streets, party, detachment. In one word: joy.

Couple kissing. He's a white man and she's a black girl with very colored curly hair. They are both wearing sparkling clothes My friend Amanda Jordão, is a Netflix screenwriter and has a beautiful way of looking to the world. She takes amazing photos from the Carnival in Rio and I have always admired them. I was wondering which would be my next painting when I thought: "why not painting one of Amanda's photos?".

I took a look at her Instagram profile and right away I saw the photo of this couple kissing. I thought" that's it! I have to paint them!". I asked Amanda if I could paint her photo and quickly she said yer. I got really happy, because in my point of view that image represents a lot the Carnival in Rio, since it shows cool and easygoing people who are enjoying that momemt.

Creative Process

It was the first time that I painted two people with different skin colors, but specially it was the first time that I was painting a white and a black person, even that her skin tone is lighter than other black people's skin tone. It took me a long time to paint their skin and I thought it would take me longer to paint her hair, since it has a lot of different colors and a new texture for me. His beard was another challenge because it is sparse on the photo and I had to change it many times until I got an ok result - I'm very critical with my artwork. I can finish painting, but it doesn't mean that I think it's 100% good.

I do oil painting, which usually takes longer to dry, but I use a medium that makes it dry faster. I used the colors Ochre Yellow, Cadmium Yellow, Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium Red, Magenta, Burnt Umber, Titanium White and Ivory Black from Winsor & Newton.

I think about creating more artwork to represent the Carnival in Rio. Although I painted the Yemanja piece represented by the dancer Geórgia Santos, from Portela, the screen was more religious than related to the Carnival (I'm still going to write a post about this piece), so I still need to think about what and how to do, since I need a mental organization to decide my next steps. Right now I'm focused in creating a series of endangered Brazilian animals and you can see some of them in my portfolio's link

If you're interested in ordering one of my pieces, please contact me. You can make a comment here with your info or asking me on my Contact Page. I'm going to create soon an online store, so before I do it we need to chat about what you would like me to do.