It's been a long time since I visited for the first time this magical place. Chefchaouen left an indelible mark on my hazy youthful memories. A blend of adventure, exoticism, magic, and beauty straight out of adventure novels. Those classic books that hardly anyone reads anymore.

Autumn is a very special season of the year in so many countries, full of colors and changes. The possibilities to play with those fall colors are amazing!

People are afraid to break soft pastels. It is painfull to see your work smashed into little pieces, but in some way, it also has a certain beauty…

Natalia Leonova, Soft pastel artist. Painting process with Mamut pastels and her impressions about Mamut.

Inspiration can come from the most diverse places.
From a book, a movie, a situation or a walk... I live near the Mediterranean Sea and the colors are abundant.

After several months of work, some other months of testing, and some more spend on pastels production I finally (finally!) release officially Mamut as a Soft Pastel brand… And Graciela Bombalova “Bogra” visits the studio to test the Mamut pastels!

Few days ago I had the chance to visit and meet an old color master. Maybe the last Handmade Oil Paint color artisan in Spain. Since it came to my ears that there was still an artisan manufacturer of oils in Spain, I had no doubt that I wanted to meet him!

In soft pastels, as in so many other aspects in life, sometimes things may not go as planned. Lots of things can go wrong… Maybe the texture, maybe the thikness is not enough, or the pigment had problems….Or maybe I forgot to add that ingredient in the formula (?)

I am not pretty sure how Mamut came to me or if it was me, looking for something, that found it on my way. We are alway so busy trying to get somewhere, trying to achieve something, trying to force our limits, that we get no time to realize what we are or, maybe the most important thing, what we really want.

The Ôkhra ocher EcoMuseum occupies a former ocher processing site, the Camille Mathieu factory. Abandoned in the 1950s, it has been rehabilitated to become a place of history and discovery…