Some illustrations

Three illustrations for the book "Storie di gente a pezzi" (roughly Tales of people torn to pieces), published by Del Miglio Editore. It's a collection of short stories, with illustrations by different people.
The first two illustrations were made with ink:

the last one is a pencil drawing with some post-processing (it's strongly darkened)

Sketching again

Some new images after ages. I've been busy doing stuff which I may, sooner or later, show on this blog.

A couple of sketches from last year:

and some brand new from last weekend.
The strange building in the next image, the one with two small doors, is called a giassàra in the local dialect (ghiacciaia in italian), which means "ice-house". During the winter it was filled with ice, which didn't melt for a very long time, and was used and sold during the next summer (this was in the "pre-fridge era", of course).

Some more detailed landscapes:

The white line on some images is an artifact from the scanner.

Alfalfa

Some time ago I was struggling to find the features of an imaginary character: in my mind he was quite clear, but I couldn't put him on the paper. I guess you know. So I looked for the most similar real face I could remember, and that was the smart and nice face of Alfalfa (actor Carl Switzer) from Our Gang series (yes, we know this series in Italy, too). I collected some photos and started to copy, hoping this would help me ("when you are stuck, go back to nature"...).

In fact my character turned out quite different, but the exercise was definitely useful.

Basilisk

A basilisk is a dreadful mythological animal, known as the king of snakes.
It is often depicted as a rooster with a snake tail and bird wings, however different versions of the myth report a mixute of almost any animal, so I felt free to imagine my own version. I simply tried to express the main characteristics, such as the terrific appearance, the deadly gaze and the poisonous breath.

Krivopeta

A weird creature today.
A krivopeta (or krivapeta) is a mythological figure coming from the border between Italy and Slovenia. As many other figures from myth, her description varies greatly, from a benevolent friend of people (sometimes she even marries a man) to a evil-minded witch. One thing however is distinctive of a krivopeta: her feet point backward.
Drawing such a strange woman is a challenge: the anatomy clearly doesn't work, and she look unbalanced... although after drawing a few, she now looks quite natural to me...  :)
Another question arises: is she an ugly witch, or a beautiful girl cursed with a deformity?

Sketching in the mountains

Some sketches from my recent holidays.

The simpler the better.

Landscape with malga

According to my dictionary, malga translates to "shepherd's hut in the Alps".
Sketched yesterday during a walk in the mountains. The big cloud timely arrived at the end of my drawing session, and filled a space too empty.
My landscapes are always "tasteless", unfortunately...(EDIT: "flavorless", not "tasteless", as blog readers pointed out)

Some more birds

I've been busy recently with some works I can't show on this blog, so here are a couple of my usual "bird drawings".

I'm grateful to my friend Antonio, who loves watching and photographing birds and other animals, for providing me with many good photos and allowing me to use them freely as reference.

Sandwich tern (Sterna sandvicensis or Thalasseus sandvicensis) and other seabirds.


Barn swallow (Hirundo rustica), young specimens.

Airship study

A study for the next image on airships - much less realistic, as you can see. I show the preliminary drawing here because I'm quite sure that the painting will be less incisive and interesting - so, why do you make a painting? Because people (including me) like colors, sometimes...

More gulls

As I have already said, it's easy to take pictures of gulls in my town, so I'm afraid you will see a lot of drawings/paintings of gulls in the future, I'm experimenting a bit on different styles and techniques.

A couple of drawings. The first is done with a more tonal approach, suggesting a kind of "moist atmosphere"


in the second I reverted to my usual line style, which seems more lively to me


I also did a watercolor study (with very limited gouache and pencil touches). Due to lack of planning, I completely messed up the backgroud.


I'm still hesitant between a true soft watercolor effect, and a more precise description, which is what I actually got despite my initial intent.
Painting watercolor twice in a year is not the right way to improve...

Portrait

A quick sketch from life. Unfortunately she looks older than she actually is (but luckily you don't know).
Made in sanguine.

Gulls

Gulls are common on the river in my town, especially in winter. They gladly accept some food (mostly old bread) and "pose" for some photos.
These are probably young specimens of black-headed gull (Larus ridibundus). The big one on the lower left is a different species, probably a yellow-legged gull (Larus michahellis).

Knight and dragon/6

A new drawing on an old theme... the title actually could be "the knight's nightmare", possibly the night before the battle (but did he know in advance?).
I'm using a bit more of shading than usual, but I'm not very satisfied with the super-polished look, I have to look for a freer effect.

Warthog

I'm illustrating a short tale where a nasty wild boar terrifies people and destroys everything in a realm.
Unfortunately wild boars have a "teddy bear" look which is not freightening at all, while warthogs have the tipical villain look I was looking for... so, here is a study of a warthog, with some liberties.

Tortoise and rooster

The tortoise is a nightly, earthly creature, the rooster is the messenger of light, breaking the spell of dark powers... well, at least according to some ancient legends dating back probably more than two thousands years, and still present in modern popular tales.
I used the same technique explained here, which once more proved very flexible and reworkable - I changed my mind about the tortoise, it started with regular legs but then I decided to let it emerge from the rocks.
Unfortunately the scanner has turned the nice paper texture into a boring, cloudy one.

Messy ostrich

Inkscape is a nice vector graphics editor, like Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator, but it's open-source and free.
Although vector graphics is not my favourite medium, sometimes I like to play a little with bezier curves and the like. You really have the feeeling that you are drawing with your mind, not with your hand, which can be pleasant or annoying depending on your disposition and your mood.
Last spring I took part in the contest for the splash screen of version 0.48, which included a new spray tool. In this case my approach was not "pure vector", as I first drew the main character with a pencil, then traced it (that is: convert to vector) and then compose the image, but the final result still retains the free-hand look.
The image was done in a hurry, and it shows, but anyway I thought it was worth showing.


And no, my proposal was not selected, in case you ask.

Massariol

A massariol is like a jester elf or a goblin, he likes to make jokes and he can easily trasform and disguise, but he's basically good-hearted. He usually dresses in red or green. Someone says he has a pig muzzle.



Massariols are very fond of women. Sometimes a massariol changes into a small child, hoping that a woman will be moved and press him to her breast.

Gnome or dwarf

A new character, a little creature, possibly a dwarf or a gnome.
It was inspired by the incredible aye-aye, a nocturnal lemur from Madagascar with a "witchy" look and long thin middle fingers, which he uses for pulling caterpillars out of holes.

The boss

"You're fired!", he may say.

Done for no particular reason, except that in general I don't like bosses, or at least some kinds of bosses.
In two versions, as I didn't like the first attempt (the bottom one). Still quite unsatisfactory, but I should do something more focused on a couple of "projects" I'm working on.

Native Americans

While I'm fighting to produce some acceptable images on a couple of subjects (more sooner or later), I've done some drawings of native americans from the famous pictures by Edwars S. Curtis. These photos are a bit controversial, I know, but anyway I think the portraits are absolutely beautiful, and make good subjects for copying... or maybe I'm wrong: good photos are perfectly accomplished works of art, and they are not good as "references" or anything like that. Anyway, here are my attempts.

The figure on the right in the next drawing had to be reworked a little (still has some proportion issues), and turned out a bit stiff and strange

Done with graphite sticks and some final touches with pencil.