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The revolution of Cinema, according to James Cameron, goes through blue guys living in the forest. I guess he never heard of Smurfs.

Man, I'm going creative on this movie.

Bus & square sketches

Yesterday evening I took the bus to meet my girlfriend downtown. Finally I had the chance to do some life sketching.

The first image, and the old man from image two are people I sketched on the bus. I sketched the walking people when I sat down on a bench in Piazza del Carmine, a square of my town.

There I played a little game, called "Sketch a Lady or a Guy in One Minute Catching the Details that Really Define Her or Him". Yep, the name of the game needs some editing, but it was cool and helpful. When drawing, its always useful to ask yourself some question, before messin' around with your pencil: "what shape do I see?", "what is that makes my subject pop out?" and so on. Then you figure out what really defines your subject, and concentrate on those elements.

When I saw the lady you see in picture two, she was kinda posh in her walk, she had an hourglass-like shape, and a huge fur in her jacket hood. So i focused on those elements.

The guy on the left in image three was tall and happy-go-lucky, and so forth. If you want to draw quickly and more efficiently, you have to figure out what you need and need not to put in your work.

I managed to doodle until my butt went ice cold, then I had to stop.

Bear with me

Couple of days ago I was working hard, for many hours. When I noticed that my computer was beginning to smoke I realized it was the moment for a little break, so I powered it down for a while.

Then I took a Xerox paper and started doodling. It came out a bear. I love drawing animals, I'm quite sure I have more beast sketches to post, somewhere.

When the bear sketch was done I took my pastels. Bad idea, Xerox paper cannot handle pastels. Sure enough it ended up a mess. I tried to fix it with Painter, but I should have left just the pencil sketch.

It's raining.

Who are you calling a Befana?

The fact today it's Befana day is purely coincidental.

Yesterday I had a nice dinner with my friends. It was a night of celebration, big announcement and good food!

Our dear Michela got the job she was looking for, and with many exciting news to come, we presented her with the little painting you see, and a bouquet which had been dressed with pyjama by the owner of the flower boutique. God knows why...

Cheers!

First painting of 2010

This Xmas I received some art supplies, quite an easy way to make me happy. A big sketchbook, a sketch kit (pencils, blenders, graphite), and a beautiful box packed with coloured charcoals.

I had to try them, so here is my first painting of 2010, which is also my first charcoal and pencil painting. Hope to improve with this technique, i really love the rich, textured colour given by charcoals!

By the way, the image shows The Basilica di Nostra Signora di Bonaria, a great church of my town consecrated to Saint Mary.

Car sketch - a smaller and quiet version of "bus sketch"

Yesterday evening I was parked with my car, waiting to do some workout at the jim (which incidentally was suicidal).

By the way, at some point this really funny guy walk down the street: he was long, thin, with a peculiar hairdo.

I had my sketchbook (duh), so I took my chance with it.

Bye!

Something personal

Hi there!

Couple of weeks ago, an idea popped up in my mind.

Actually it was a dream. From that dream, I started to think about a personal project, something I really believe in. It is taking shape in my head, and as long as I stay focused on that, it may turn out good.

Luckily, I'm not alone in this, somebody's helping me a lot, and today we went for a walk in town, taking pictures, watercolor sketches, and a nice coffee with croissant!

We're planning to do it every weekend, let's see what happens!

Bye!

Bus sketch

Today I went to the eye doctor. I'm not going to get blind anytime soon.

I took the bus, 'cause I don't want to poison the world with my car (don't listen to the people sayin' I can't really drive).

Sure enough, I had my sketchbook, so I took the chance to do some real-life sketching of the people on the bus. The lines are a bit shaky, I had to draw when the bus was queued at the traffic light...

New sketches...happy now?

Here are some sketches I'm posting quikcly, otherwise somebody is going to get mad at me...

The first one is a pencil and watercolor sketch I did for a ChiUstream contest, is called "Mermaid Morning Care", and it managed to get even a vote! Wow, I'm celebrating.

This is the original sketch. Now that I think about it, I should have leave it as it was, but being smarter than a fox, I managed to mess around with color and -way too much- saturation, ending up with this:

Second sketch is for today ChiUstream contest. Subject: a caricature of great artist Jason Seiler. Some of the guy participating posted pretty amazing stuff. But it's a really hard challenge, prize being an original caricature of the winner made by Seiler himself.

Huge prize! Intense stuff!

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.