Smoky Train

Sometimes we may look at things and see things... ahahah! ;)
(happens to me a lot! and you?)

Welcoming Fall

Season greetings!! You've gotta love autumn! :)
These really cute leaves came to life with colored pencils on paper.

Fire Dress?

Remember my elemental costumes? :D
I said at the time that I was working on "fire" dress, and that was true... But the result wasn't what I had in mind so I left it for while. Then I started this painting... I didn't mean to turn it into a fire elemental sort of paintng, but it turned out that way. So... here is Fire Dress after quite some time! ;)

Edit:
In case you're curious, here is the older version of Fire dress... unfinished. I felt it needed more work and more thinking. :D I love the colors, though!
Which one you prefer?

Flora - Iconic

This is Flora, the character of ICONIC Network, a congress of animation & concept art from Brazil. :) Great artists there!
They challenged us to re-draw their character just for fun and I felt like participating; I liked the character already, she's really cute! I had fun drawing and painting her and here is the result. ;)

Horses!

Back on track, folks! :)
Sorry for being so absent these past months, artistic wise. Some changes happened in my life, I needed to adjust and figure out a lot of things. I'm happy that I'm back and I will be posting more stuff. :)
Today I'm sharing another quick painting (2 hours, +/-). I didn't draw horses for years so it felt good drawing them again! I used to draw horses a lot when I was a little girl; they were my favorite animal until the wolf replaced them. ;)  Sincde then I almost forgot how much I love horses... will sure be drawing them more!

I notice my paintings get a lot more saturated than the originals when I submit them to blogger. Can't figure out why? Oh well...

Happy Kids Africa - Pharrell

I love, Love, LOVE this video!!! So I'm sharing the love. ;) *heart*

Carina talks about the Transformers Project

I'm a volunteer at the Transformers Project (Portugal), a social project supported by the Global Changemakers, among others. This project helps teenagers in poor social conditions to make the difference in their community through what they love doing most - their talents, which at the Transformers we call "the superpowers" that can transform the world.
I didn't say it in the video, but the place where I teach is essencially a prison for teenagers, with a rehab program of which the Transformers Project is happily a part of..

Being a part of the Transformers Project is something very special to me. So, a friend of mine asked me and 3 more volunteers to record a presentation video in english saying what it is for us to be a Transformer, so she can share it with people in Italy this week.

I decided to share my video in youtube as well because I feel it's a Universal message.

I used some drawings made by me to illustrate this message as well. ;)

Enjoy!

http://www.projectotransformers.org/site/

A Carina song

Now, this has definitely made my day!!!! ;) A friend was looking for songs with his friend's names and sent me this. How did I miss this marvel? Ahahah! Beautiful videoclip animation, I love it! :D

Finding the treasures within...

I live in a beautiful country. *heart*

If all you hear about Portugal is the financial crisis, know that you know very little about my country... 

This is "Castro de São Paio", in the north coast of Portugal. It's also a very old geologic fault. It feels amazing just touching those stones... 

Light on Water

Letting my mind flow while creating is very relaxing... Now that my mind is peaceful and quiet I can go to sleep. :)

Enjoy! 

Leaves on a breeze

Afternoon in the park inspired... danced on trees that day, not caring what people would think. I was alone, it felt joyful and liberating! The leaves were mostly yellow and brown with all kinds of shades. There were lots and lots on the ground, like a thick carpet. It's great to walk on the leaves and even kick them so they fly all over. :)

Peace for Peace

Concerning the recent events in Paris, my message is: peace for peace. Don't fight; don't indulge in the same actions that you so condemn. Hate generates more hate, violence generates more violence. Nothing can possibly justify killing people, and certainly not revenge. The point is to END that. And it must be done by example. Violence can only be healed with peace, love and understanding. This is a language violence is not used to see, so we must show it.

There has been enough pain and loss. We can rise above this.
Let us stand with our hearts united. Let our souls be peaceful.

Although its wings are stained with blood, the bird will continue to fly no matter what.

X-Mas Greetings animation

Made specially for you, guys! :)

Merry Christmas and a happy new year 2015 everyone!

With Love,
Carina

A Tribute

This is my tribute to one of the people that most inspired me this year: Paul Whitecotton, from the documentary "People in Motion". I've seen other interviews with the guys and the way Paul talks about parkour makes me think of how it applies to everything in life... For instance, you don't have to do parkour to feel at one with everything around you.

It's easy for me to feel at one with nature in nature but I've always felt very much uncomfortable in cities, my spirit would close itself up. Paul has inspired me to see buildings and all man made things around me in a beautiful way. I learned to feel at one with everything! It's like as if my spirit is parkouring the surroundings all the time and every single corner counts. It's wonderful, it feels free and I do feel very happy in that! :)

Paul, thank you so much. *heart* You're amazing!

This tribute is a digital painting done with a reference shot from "People in Motion".
And the "LOVE" sign with Paul jumping is directly traced out of another screen shot.

Comic Con Portugal

I was there! :D And I appear in this video at 4'53" on the right, happily catching up with Sérgio Martins, one of the twins that worked on the recently released animated short "Poets" (from AVA's new album). We can see Sergio in the video too... a little bit of his hair and black shirt! xD The girl with her back to the camera is Carina Morais, another talent that worked on "Poets". I had the pleasure of meeting her for the first time that day. Carina met Carina. In the words of Sergio: "Carinas everywhere!!!"

Comic Con was great! I've never been to one before so I don't have any reference to compare. Sure, some things could be better, but this was the first one in Portugal and it can only get much better from here. It's great that Comic Con has arrived in times where national comics are growing here. About time! :) We also have amazing talents that went international working for big publishers, such as Marvel, DC, etc. Names like Daniel Maia, Daniel Henriques, Jorge Coelho, among many others. Was great to see them there!

One of my favorite things in this Con was the Star Wars imperial march complete with the original song and tons of star troopers around an enormously tall Darth Vader. It was "WOW"! Couldn't stop staring at him each time he passed by!

Another funny thing was that there was a lot of "walkers" from "Walking Dead". They stood in a cage and we could literally "Rent a Walker" and walk him all around with a rope. Even though I didn't watch this series (yet) I felt fascinated with the concept. The guys looked really creepy and really walked like living dead... must have been so tiresome for the poor guys after 3 entire days like that, ahah! One of them, one of the ugliest in matter of fact, startled me and I almost collapsed with a heart attack. :P As I was saying my goodbies to Sérgio and Carina, this walker poked me on the back and as I turned he was right on my face mumbling "aaaa" like zombies do. I'm not usually the hysterical type but I think I let out a little scream and I reacted really funny, my friends laughed. I actually felt scared, it was like a scene from an horror movie and I hate horror movies. :P

I was at Comic Con working with Luis Magalhães, author of the fantasy genre book "A Filha do Gelo" (Ice Daughter) to which I illustrated the cover. It was nice signing the book along with the author and draw a quick, personalized sketch for the person who bought it. :)

Here is some photos of yours truly and the author at our table, a picture of me making a drawing, next is a finished drawing and lastly, a couple of heroines with the books in their hands. ;)
These photos were taken in the last day... hope to be back next year!!! I'm addicted to comic con now! *heart*

Parkour Documentary: People in Motion

This is one of my favorite documentaries of all time. I even get emotional when I watch it, lol! Is this normal?? :P  Perhaps it's my passion for movement... These guys are so awesome, so part of everything around them... Makes me feel inspired! 

If you enjoy parkour, you're gonna love this too. :)

Dancing Couple Animated!!!

Today I want to share with you a little teaser of what I've been up to lately. ;) It's a little dance scene with a couple. It's the first time I'm animating a couple dancing and I'm really excited!!! :D No references are being used, only inspiration in dance, movement and youtube lessons by my animation idol Glen Keane. *heart*

Enjoy the first phase. ;)

(now with better definition, pew!)

Watercolors

Here are some watercolor paintings I did recently. There's something so special and enjoyable about brushes, ink and paper that no digital painting can do. These are two very different ways of painting and I love them both. :)
Hope you enjoy my paintings!
The dance couple one is a commissioned gift (for a dancer, of course!) and the "water flow" one is a gift I made for my friend, I wanted to inspire her to let her emotions flow like water. The fairy one is a personal work simply because I love fairies, they represent joy to me. ;)

Master Heart

True story! :)
I find there's no better guidance in life than my heart's soft loving voice. My brain had to learn to quiet itself in order to really listen to the heart and translate its feelings in wise words of advice. :) The heart knows better for ourselves than the mind; it's when the heart and the mind join in cooperation that we become the true masters of our lives.

"Learn to use your emotions to think. Not think with your emotions."

Cymatics!

CYMATICS: Science Vs. Music - Nigel Stanford from Nigel Stanford on Vimeo.

This is so cool!!
I'm an absolute fan of sound, vibration and electromagnetic energy and also their effects over matter as we know it. It's fascinating! This music video plays with some of these science experiments and it's so cool to watch. :D

If you watch more about cymatic experiments at Youtube you'll see that it's not hard to imagine how deep this can be in terms of creation itself...

Like master Nikola Tesla used to say: "If you want to know the secrets of the Universe think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration."

*heart*