HARD LINE: FUNNY ILLYRIANS WITH LONG NOSES

The posts about our - me and Nina - stay in Croatia and travels in Istria have been edited and condensed into this one after the photographs and some of the drawings were moved to tumblr.com, where you may go on following them.
I only retained here the first drawings, photographed and edited in Photoshop, playing with color balance and brightness-contrast. All of them are simple small line drawings, the bottom two on yellow paper, the other ones on white paper.

Those Illyrian or maybe Greek artists (above) liked to see themselves with long funny noses and no beards. You may find these in the Archaeological Museum of Istria, along with many interesting items.
Pula/Pola (follow this link for the address), Istria. If you came from the Historical Museum, you will have to go around a while before you find the place. Then greet all the Roman statues that mark the entrance.

Luigi (above) is the name of the boat on exhibition at the entrance of the Historical Museum of Istria. The life in the old Austro-Hungarian shipyards of Pula is largely documented in the museum. You can also see in these drawings details of the rudder. The rudder attracted my attention because it made me think immediately of the old war galley's rudders, probably attached in the same ingenious way. To get there walk up to the old Venetian Fortress.

We were there in 2004. We had just come from Malaga. In our first summer together in Croatia me and Nina were selling our work on the street in Pula. It was fun, we didn't make much money but we had to pay none anyway. It is over now. When we were there we were almost the only independent artists showing drawings and paintings on the street. One of the local best known artists died that summer. You will not see any now. Close to the Forum in Pula/Pola, Istria.

We still sell our work. If you want to see it, here are the links:
http://www.cat-on-the-beach.blogspot.com
http://www.artslant.com/global/artists/show/86566-anica-nina-govedaric a
http://stores.lulu.com/relvas
enjoy.

Above, house near the Forum in Pula, the Istrian metropolis. The street on the background goes round the perimeter of the old town. It is a tourist's paradise. There you can buy all sorts of souvenirs exactly like the ones you bought in similar places around the world but with different tags, posters that sometimes look like paintings and paintings that sometimes look like posters, cheap pizzas and minuscule čevapi (tchevapi) only balanced with expensive seafood. You may also lay down on one of the several empty Roman sarcophagi scattered around and visit a high density of ruins whitened by ages of sunshine and storms.
To obtain this perspective get out of the crowd and turn to a garden close to the parking lot. I once dreamed of opening here, in a large empty space for rent, a bar or a disco called Pula-pula.