The Family that Sweats Together

Today Sissy and João and I went to a nearby gym (here in Brazil they are on every other corner) and signed up for the “family plan”. Finally after 7 months João and I are getting back to exercise. I have decided to try out weight lifting and a treadmill instead of the pool, so as to avoid sinus problems. I may even do some stretching classes. We start on Monday, although the gal tried her best to get us to start today. We thought it was enough of a leap for one day to go out and sign up. Hope we’ll all like it.

On Tuesday we celebrated Sissy’s 23rd birthday. Can you believe how time flies? We had a nice luncheon at Outback to celebrate.

Today I spent my time reworking the graphite portraits I am doing of the three ministers. In a fit of anger and frustration and I simply ditched the first attempt. After hours and hours, it just wasn’t quite right. I kept erasing, but couldn’t get it right, so felt it was better to start again. You know the old saying about the fact that it’s better to sew a new dress than to try to alter an old one. I was SOOOOOO frustrated, and not sure I would do any better on the second try, but I think maybe I have. To my eyes, it looks a lot more like Joào and Hélio. I still haven’t worked too much on Eduardo and since the whole drawing is too large to fit on the scanner, I’m showing you only the two of them. I have decided to do their suits in charcoal, when I have finished their faces. The charcoal will be dark and rough enough to represent the clothes better. I hope I can finish in time for the art exposition the first Sunday of August. In addition, I have to leave time to have it framed. The problem is, of course, that I get tired after about 4 hours of work. These two faces have easily taken 10 hours and there’s still a lot to go. Wish me luck!