Last January when I was in Tokio I payed a visit to my very good friend Luis Mendo. I arrived at Luis beautiful house, also called “La Choni” (but that’s a different story). We went out to celebrate my birthday together.

As I was closing his door, Luis started pitching his idea: he just got the Legendary Posters sent from Amsterdam and to my surprise he had them cut down into A4 sized pieces…

Luis smiled at me and saying “What do you think? isn’t that great?” I went pale, didn’t know what to say: “But Luis, these posters were supposed to be err… posters…” I mumbled.

As a way of shutting my mouth, he gave me my birthday present: a gorgeous set of vintage japanese pencils and a wooden clipboard. “Happy Birthday, amigo” he said. “Let’s go and draw ourselves away, Tokio is waiting for us.”

So this was the idea: We would go out to celebrate my birthday with a bunch of old japanese pencils, an old wooden clipboard and a couple of Heineken dismembered posters clinched to it… (Luis is a big fan of Dexter, so no surprise there) and we would draw the people we would encounter along the night.

And this is what happened, we went straight to an izakaya (drinking bar with food) in Aoyama and started a routine of drawing people, drinking beers, eating oishii Japanese izakaya food, drink some more, laugh, talk about Amsterdam vs. Tokyo, show our portraits to the locals, drink sake etc. to finish paying the bill, stepping outside and heading into our next destination: a Peruvian restaurant a few meters away from the izakaya, to celebrate the Pisco Sour day in Japan. Not that we are that much into Pisco, but hey, a party is a party.

We sat at the table, order some food (our second dinner) we drank some pisco sour… and I suddenly realised WHAT THE HECK!!! I had completely forgotten my beautiful present: the poster I had started drawing in at the izakaya… Luis didn’t really know wether to laugh or to slap my face… Or maybe drink another pisco sour, so he ordered another round and commanded me to go back and bring back my things from or loose our friendship forever…

But…

The drawings were not there! They had vanished! Bummed, I went back to the pisco party, told Luis about it, ordered another pisco, and a few minutes later, 4 suited up guys from Peru approached us. They have been looking at Luis mesmerizing drawings. One of them was very kind, well suited uptight guy introduced himself: “Hi I’m the ambassador of Peru in Tokio I couldn’t help to over look you guys drawing (well Luis) and we decided to have a closer look if we may…” Next thing was us shaking hands with the ambassador, getting photographed by a couple of press photographers and having yet another pisco sour!

That night we ended up at the Park Hyatt hotel (yes, the one in Lost In Translation) having cocktails, laughing and admiring the immensity and striking beauty of Tokyo. And of course drawing over coasters.

And that is the story that accompanies Luis’ poster. A story based in real events. And that is why I’m going to bid for Luis’ piece, just because it’s the most beautiful time capsule I have ever seen.

Kampai amigo Luis and thank you, always.

And least but not last, here you can see some of the process I followed to create my poster. The first idea I had was to feature my talented friend and artist Assaf Iglesias ridding the green bottle but I’ve messed up the drawing on the inking process… Then I thought of filling up the poster with faces, because I’m just a bit obsessed with portraits… And then I thought of drawing a complete freestyle non sketched face, the one you can see on the cover of this post.