Portal 3 was a big challenge. Carnival happened, the heat got out of control, I got sick, Perola painted an entire dragon and then, in an instant, white-washed the whole thing. It is the smallest Portal so far and the one that put up the most fight.

We realize now that to work during the week of Carnival, Rio’s non-stop, week-long party, was kind of insane. The city does not want to let you work. It’s a battle. One day it took us almost an hour to get to the studio (normally a 20 minute bike ride). We had to pass through the Beatles bloco or “Sargento Pimenta,” Portuguese for “Sergeant Pepper. This was a hilarious and frustrating nightmare. Flamengo beach filled up with tens of thousands of costumed partiers and Perola and I, on bikes tried to weave through the drunken crowds. We were surrounded by chaos on all fronts, road blocks, beer spills, cat-calls and I almost got hit by a bus at some point along the way. We arrived at the studio frazzled and immediately collapsed on the couch.

Sargento Pimenta bloco in Flamengo

Temperatures were extra high this week and I think I got sick from lack of sleep and too much heat. We had to push on. But at one point I felt so weak I couldn’t go to the studio, I couldn’t work, I couldn’t do a thing. I spent the day in bed. With lots of garlic tea, water and rest, today is the first day that I am starting to feel like myself again.

Portal 3 in progress

Perola and I tried to paint like each other and this taught us a lot but it made things more challenging too. Our styles still looked so different from each other and we struggled to make the the monster and the dragon fit together into the same painting. At one point we were painting and out of nowhere Perola attacked the dragon she had just taken all day to create with white paint. “It was all wrong, she said,” aggressively blotting out all of her work. I was at a loss, it looked like it had been coming, just needed some work. Sometimes it’s better to start from scratch though. It took us a half week longer than we wanted it to. We had to unify our shading to make both monsters look to be in the same place. But today we finally finished it and stood for a long time backed up against the wall, heads tilted back and forth, eyes squinted, studying it, quite pleased with the result. Finally we had passed through Portal 3, two fighting dragons made peace with each other. Then we  rolled it up and added it to the growing stack of finished Portals. 4 down, 9 more to go. 

Portal 3, finally finished

The number 3 is Movement. It’s related to the 3 geometric forms and 3 primary colors.The square, triangle, circle and red, yellow and blue. The Lord of death from the Tibetan wheel of life pictured at the top of the triangle, represents the impermanence; change. The baby dragon inside the circle represents the movement of time and the three dimensions.

On to Portal 4!