Artwork Title: Barrels (Pipos)
Medium: soft pastel drawing on Mi-Teintes paper
Size: 20 × 25 in (50.8 × 63.5 cm)
Year: 2025
Artwork and story from Luis Bramao
My name is Luis Bramao.
I started painting late — at 66 — and it was the right time.
A civil engineer by profession, I spent my life dealing with concrete, roads, and deadlines. But there was always an itch: the need to build something less stable, more fragile, more my own.
A few years ago, I finished some unfinished works by my father. That moment connected me to his legacy and lit a lasting fire — since then I’ve never stopped creating.
Today, I work mostly with soft pastels. They’re immediate and honest: paper, pigment, gesture — and stubbornness. Lots of stubbornness.
My artwork Barrels (Pipos) is part of that stubbornness — a chromatic transformation born from an argument with the paper. Cylinders illuminated, reflecting a light that does not exist.
I’m currently a student of the Watercolor Academy, and I’d like to complement that experience by strengthening my classical drawing foundation through the Drawing Academy.
If people vote for me, I hope it’s not for perfection, but for persistence — the joy of learning how to see, one drawing at a time.
