airmalta cat-muc

airmalta cat-muc, originally uploaded by omar.paint.

flying to Munich

Good Bye UAE

This my last post written in the UAE. I still have some stories to tell and some drawings from the UAE to post but I will do it from other countries. I'm going home or I'm leaving home? It seems that I carry my home in my sketchbook.

I have been 10 months in the UAE and I have learnt a lot about this wonderful place. It was not the first time that I moved to another country. From Ecuador to Germany, from Germany to Italy, from Italy to the UAE. And every time everything that is important in my life have to find space in one bag. And since space is precious I prefer in many cases to keep the most important things just in my head and in my heart. So I try to learn everything I can from the places I visit. Sketching is my way to discover things, to transform what it is at the beginning strange and different into something wonderful and special. You see, when you draw something it requires you to contemplate and examine it for a long time. When you finish the drawing you own it in your memory and you will never forget it. And little by little you start calling that place home.

I got a great experience in the UAE. In no other place my work has atracted so much attention. People gathered arround me respectfully when I was drawing. I could see in their faces that they were happy. I appeared 2 times in The National Newspaper, and one in the Gulf News. Sketching also had allowed me to meet wonderful people and make new friends. People I am going to miss. It is sad to leave when you know that there are still many places to draw in this country. My dream will be to come back some day and do a journey through the 7 Emirates and portrait them all.

So where I'm going now? I'm going to a place I have never go before. I'm going to visit my mother in Canada for 3 months. She moved there 2 years ago. I'm going to sketch new places and make beautiful books. So I guess I am going home.

PS: if you want to support my work and my travels, you can buy prints of my drawings in http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/omar-jaramillo.html

Emirati beard

I have never had beard. But in my last month here I decided to grow one, after an emirati friend told me that going to the barber was something I had to experience in the UAE. If dificult to explain how the cut is but here is a picture of me, look at the corners under to my ears. Of course it is still growing.. .. any advice from any beardkeeper, how to keep it nice? this is definitly "unknown territory" for me.

Probably more than the beard I like going to the barber. I feel compleatly spoiled and there is a great place to do sketches.

Twitter

Hi guys,
I got twitter. I still don't know how it works. But a media consultant I met in the bookfair in Abu Dhabi told me it is usefull if people want to follow my blog.

Omar Jaramillo's profile on Twitter
@omarpaint

Wadi Wurayah, Fujeira, UAE

I was contacted by Nesrine from the World Wildlife foundation to visit the place. She saw me at the Pecha Kucha Night in Dubai and asked me if I would like to see the the Wadi Wurajah.
A wadi is a valley where little water runs or a dry riverbed. Wadi Wurajah is a natur park with an endangered fauna and flora and as Nesrine said, one of the most beautiful places of the UAE.
My friend Phillip came with me. He was visiting me from Germany for a few days. He is also a landscape architect and he was very interested to see this exceptional landscape, too.
The experience was fantastic. After a great road trip through different Emirates, We met aNesrine at the Badyia Mosque in Fujeira. We move to Naessrine car a 4x 4 adn drive though the dry river bed. The landscape was amzing the Wadi ius full of colors.

The restaurant at the end of the universe

That place from the famous radio show "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" from Douglas Adams is what came to my mind when I first saw this restaurant on the top of the Jabel Hafeet Mountain in Al Ain.
The building stands isolated on the observation platform; sun and wheather have done their work fadding the red colors of the sign that reminds you something come out from an Edward Hooper painting.
There is something absurd in finding such a building here, I got the feeling that is out of place, an architecture not related to the place but transplanted through some kind of cosmic force here. But is at the same time beautiful for the same reasons...:-)

Abu Dhabi Bookfair

I went just to visit the bookfair and I finished making new friends, meeting a lot of interesting people and with my picture in the newspaper. Here are some pictures drawings portraits from my friends in the Illustrators Corner. They are all very talented artists.
A portrait of the talented illustrator Kate Forrester.
Check her website:
http://www.kateforrester.co.uk/



a Portrait of David Habchy on the table of the illustrators corner, on the right his own drawing. check his blog http://klekeesh.blogspot.com/

Drawing Dina Khorchid: