The first - no, I'm not quoting Barry White

This is my very first illustration completely done in Photoshop.

It's a mess, yeah. I didn't quite know how to control composition, lights, shapes on a digital canvas, so to speak.

By the way, the picture was inspired by a lore of my land.

Once upon a time, sheperds and farmer of Sardinia were facing a terrible menace: the "Scultone", a dreadful huge lizard, which had the power to turn people into stone with a glance.

People were dying, flocks were disappearing, until one day lo! Saint Peter came, to save the day. Riding toward the menace, he defeated the evil creature with just a small mirror, used to watch the monster reflection without meeting its eyes.

Yep, it's the old story, "guy meets the petrifying creature", "guy uses the mirror", "guy kills the petrifying creature". I guess every culture has a story like that.

Sketchin' around

One thing an illustrator, painter or whatever should do is go out and sketch from real life.

I never do that. I'm bad.

But there's always time to do better, so one day I went out, after work, walked to the park, like a good ol' man, you know, sat on a bench and started drawing.

I must say, it really helps, and I definitely need to practice. Most important, it helps you realize that is full of weird people out there!

Hatter-ChiUstream contest

This is a quick sketch I did for last Chiustream (http://chiustream.blogspot.com/).

When I woke up in the morning I found the guys still chatting and drawing, discovered I had 'round ten minutes to upload a sketch about Alice's Mad Hatter, so I did a pencil sketch as fast as I could, scanned it and Corel Painted the hell out of it.

The ugly white glow was done 'cause I messed up the border of the drawing because of the hurry. Poor excuse.

The title of my piece: Hatter (duh).

U R what U eat

You are what you eat. As simple as that.

Sleepin' Alice in Wanderland

From one of my favourite books.

Brunetta

Cute little Minister Brunetta.

Looks like a tiny kid. One you don't wanna deal with.

Say Hello to Lily!

Actually the little girl is more dangerous than her new pet.

Swine flu!

Swine flu has come! Beware!

Straight after that, which came after the "birds flu", there will be the frightful "bull disease", then the "rhino sickness", the "hippo illness" and finally the "baboon syndrome".

Should we call a doctor or a vet? Good question.

P.s.: the sketch is a quick pencil drawing I did some time ago to test Corel Painter X. I definitely fell in love with that software!

Wood Witch

Some time ago I had this frightening dream. Today it's quite blurry, I'll try to get some sense out of it.

I am in this poor house, with many strangers, and children too. All of a sudden, somebody burst into the house. They are some kind of baby gang, 13 years old kids with guns. They start shooting around, and two children of the house got hit by the flying bullets. I call the police and tell what's happening, asking for help, but they say "We can't take care of it, it's not our field". I'm like "What the heck are you talking about, they're shooting the hell out of us!". Somebody starts running out of the house, to call for help. I suddenly find myself with them, driving an old car in the grey, sad contry around the house. The place seems empty, not a soul.

After a long trip we find ourselves at the threshold of a scary wood. Once inside, it gets darker and darker, the trees start casting misterious shadows around us, and one says: "Guys, beware of the Witch living in the wood. She kidnap you, dismember and eat you!". If you knew it, why did we come into the wood in the first place, then?!? No time for such questions, we keep walking.

At some point I hear somebody crying. It gets so dark, we have to follow the sound of the moans without even realize we're approaching a cliff: once we reached the edge, we see one of the wounded children from the house, wailing at the bottom of the cliff. Somebody suddenly says: "The Witch took the baby down there! It's a bait! Watch out!".

The moment I turn my back, there she is: cloacked in black, the arms and hair made of dead wood, and a white, lifeless mask as a face!

Scary, huh?

Well, that was my terrifying dream, which explains my quick sketch.

Bye!

...

...

...

Ok, after that moment, dunno why, I found myself in one Hell's Kitchen's episode, cooking near Gordon Ramsay! Bloody Hell, what a dream!

Surgery

The two fellas you see in the picture are italian politicians from the Left Party. Or what's left of the Left Party.

I painted them after the so-called "Three-el", which is a "duel" between three competitors. Those competitors were, in order of age (and therefore of chance of winning, which in Italy are the same) Pier Luigi Bersani, Dario Franceschini and Ignazio Marino. They were running for the nominee of Secretary of the Democratic Party.

This Three-el took place a couple of weeks ago, and was done to give the voters an idea of this guy's ideas. Beeing a masochist, I watched it.

During the Three-el, Bersani didn't make many efforts, maybe because he was quite sure about the election results. Franceschini and Marino, on the other hand, had their time togheter.

Marino pointed is finger against Franceschini a couple of time, and the latter didn't wait a lot to reply in a grumpy way.

Therefore my painting. What I wanted to show is the idea of Ignazio Marino, which is a surgery for real, showing his usual courteous smile, while cuts open a quite puzzled/worried Franceschini, who maybe didn't ask for a surgery...

By the way, I voted for Marino. If you're wondering where my vote ended up, try looking into the garbage bin.

Some fan art 2: Darkly Drawing Dexter

What I like about some US TV shows is that they have the guts to take on screen some stories and situations that often Cinema avoid. Dunno why, maybe there's more freedom, but I'm not so sure about it.

Just think about some great series, like Six Feet Under, Mad Men, Rome, Battlestar Galactica. They just have a lot of cheek, you must give 'em that.

Dexter is one of this kind. It shows, from the very intro, an apparently normal guy; inside of him, however, lurk a monster, the worse making of the modern society, and I'm not speaking of a politician...Something less worse, a serial killer! A serial killer's serial killer.

Here lies the dilemma: what Dexter does is bad, because he kills people, and in a quite violent, wicked way; but he kills criminals, other wicked people, cheap low life. The entire TV show plays with our morals and ethics, it slaps in our face our limits and our hypocrisy, because with our brain we condemn Dexter, but with our heart we hope he doesn't get caught and eventually killed.

It's tricky. And a lot of fun, of course.

Some fan art: Kurt Wagner!

Always loved comic books. Marvel Superheroes, with all their issues, are by far my favorite, and Nightcrawler, among them, is one of the character I love to sketch the most.

Alas, it's been ages since I read some nice Marvel comic issue...

That's me

Like the title says...

Done with Photoshop, from a really stupid picture I took with my webcam.

Welcome!

Welcome everybody!

Looking for some serious painting, news, laughs? Hey, there's plenty of blogs out there! Buzz off!

No! I'm joking! I'm ready to deliver all of it, one step at a time!

First of all, I'm an illustrator and animator from Italy.

I love to paint funny people, creatures, stuff in general. In this blog I'll share my works in progress, ideas and more.

It happens I've just started a new exciting "digital painting" course, taught by non other than Bobby Chiu (here some websites: www.schoolism.com for the school, and

www.immaginism.com for some outstanding illustrations!). In this course, with nine lessons (and assignments too) I'll learn (at least, I hope so) how to master some painting techniques, to improve what I already know, to get a proper professional illustration done and in the end to kick some ass, artistically speaking, of course!

Lesson one was a real workout on contrast, light and dark tones or, to use the title of the lesson, "Visualizing Through Darkness".

The muscle dude you see is what I managed to do, starting from a pencil drawing Bobby Chiu did.

New paintings coming soon!

Bye!