Tagged

I've been tagged by Felicity to tell 7 facts about me, here they are:
1. As well as Felicity, I have different ears too. I didn't knew it till the late 80's when I tried to put on some earphones and I just couldn't do it with the right side one.
2. I used to sing in an amateur choir as a bass-baritone. Beeing inside a Monteverdi's madrigal is a big, big, big experience.
3. Some times I used to work as a woodworker in my father's workshop. I didn't reach to learn the trade.
4. I gave up smoking on september 6, 1998. The method was the old "here, now an forever". I just hid my last Camel pack with about half the cigarettes. I found it months after while arranging my drawers and throw it away.
5. I started three degrees: Psychology, Graphic Design and Interior Design. I didn't ended none of them.
6. I don't like metallic stuff as bracelets or chains. I almost don't use watches (I use to see the hour on my cell phone). I have no wedding ring.
7. For some months I've been a lifeguard in a swimming pool.

Love letters

I made this in the spring of 1995. A month before we had known that Roberta was pregnant, and Fabio was just a little ampersand without a name. It's one of the very few of my works that hangs on a wall (in this case at home, obviously).
I've been very interested in calligraphy and lettering in the past. I used to have a very "typographic" approach to graphic design when I used to do this work. Now I just handwrite the titles and comments of my sketches (and also the new header for my blog).
I've uploaded some other "letters" here.

The old Maurits Cornelius

I knew about M. C. Escher in the late 70's in the first Martin Garner's book I read, and from then on both entered my list of the great men of all times. Years after, in 1994 I've been in Granada and get really flabbergasted by La Alhambra, specially by the decoration patterns.
I tried to know more about and I discovered that one of the biggest specialist was... Escher!! (He got interested like me on a trip to Granada he made in 1922). I tried to deepen on the study of patterns, symmetry and tessellation and it's because of this that for a while I didn't sketched so much. I had forgot all the pages I filled then on some lost folder and found them by chance a couple of weeks ago.
You can see some of them here.

I wanted to try to create an Escher-like tessellation, that was the only finished drawing of the series. Here it is (I apologize for my german transcription).

Next two were made last december as a kind of doodling in a not so inspiring waiting room.
The old MCE is always there.

EDM #56 "...keeping an eye on the holy land"

The big shadow is half a creative choice, half a fiddle to avoid drawing the second glass (it always comes different from the first one).
I made a lot of sketches and two serious (and missed) attempts before this one, but I'm not so courageous as Suzanne: I haven't published them.
I've made this with France's stratospheric portraits somewhere in mind (color on the back is a little homage).
Thank you both!

M. takes his paints and his threads...

...and he waves a pattern all of his own.
(Just to go on with Andrea's game).
I've just tried to fill a page omiting recognizable elements and with a certain balance of black and white. I could have entitled it "Composition #19" or "Black & White mud fighting", or just "Untitled", and then someone could have considered it a piece of whoknowswhat and buy it for many, many hundreds and sell it for many, many thousands, but the real truth is that this is a simple, quiet, relaxing load of doodles.

You can see it even bigger here.