Barcelona: in the bar, café, restaurant...

Second round of sketches from my trip to Barcelona over Christmas.
These were made in different bars and cafés.

Barcelona: people in the metro

Some days passed in Barcelona over Christmas.

These are sketches made in the metro.

Andrea Joseph left this pearl in my sketchbook

We were in a fantastic and cheap osteria in the center of Bologna. Anah and me started sketching while we wait for our meal (there was some unforgettable tagliatelle with cocoa and radicchio) and then I invited Andrea to draw too. She told me that she doesn't use to draw in public, but since I insisted, she made this sketch with my brush pen in my sketchbook. Once finished, she told me that she not only doesn't use to draw in public, but she doesn't use to draw with brushes either.

Looking at this gorgeous sketch I'm still wandering why she doesn't, and I' feel so proud she left this rare pearl in my sketchbook.

Some years ago mi father made the armchair, few days ago I made the sketch (and seems France made it too)

After the all the mess with the Bologna Children's Book Fair, I went to Spain for a week to meet my parents and I have so many drawings to post (more than 100 pages!). Of course I'll put some films on my YouTube if not I will never finish.
I haven't planned to start posting all that stuff from this drawing but I changed my mind when I saw France posted this yesterday. She made the drawing of that chair just one day after I did mine. Her chair was at the doctor's office where she went because of her future son. Mine was made some 20 years ago by my father. Me and France love Paul Auster and he loves coincidences: I suddenly thought this one was a little pretty one.
Salut, France!

Autumn 2008 sketchbook

In november, at the Clermont-Ferrand's Biennale du Carnet de Voyage, my friend Enrique Flores gave to many of us one of this little sketchbooks (10x15 cm) for which he had made the cover illustration. I started to draw on it when I came to Bologna and finished it exactly one month after. Almost all drawings were finished at place. I used 6 water brushes loaded with different watered fountain pen inks, except for the yellow that was liquid watercolor. The black lines were made with a Pentel brush pen and 2 Lamy Safary (with EF and calligraphic nibs) both loaded with Noodler's ink. Click on the image to zoom and leaf through pages, or see a video here.

Bologna, Sala Borsa Library

La Sala Borsa (literally Stock Exchange Room) is a fantastic library with a huge ammount of batches, specially on the children and teenage section. But it's also an outstanding building which entrance is situaded about 20 meters far from the famous Fontana del Nettuno. As you can guess from the name, it has not always been a library: from 1870s (in which it was built) to the World War II it was Bologna's stock exchange room . Afterwards it became a sports arena till 2001 in which the library was inaugurated. But the most amazing thing about this places is that, under the transparent floor, it's still possible to see some remains of Felsina, the name that the etruscans gave to the city when thsy founded it on the 6th century BC.

Bologna, Piazza Minghetti

This was one of our stops on the last SketchCrawl (october 25).
Piazza Minghetti is not one of my favorite places in Bologna: it's the center of the financial, posh and snooty Bologna, anyway (as the whole Bologna) it has some elegant, romantic and decadent charm.


This first sketch shows a fat man that said rude nonsenses to everyone that passed near him, seemed not to be in his right mind. The following one is a detail of the huge plane tree in the center of the square. It always take my attention much more than the buidings.

Brush drawing has its own grammar and its own rhetoric, the hand holds the brush but it immediately takes the floor (I'd better say it takes the paper) and tells most of the message.

Street concert in Cremona

A couple of months ago I've been in Cremona with family and some friends. Cremona is the hometown of Stradivari, Guarneri, Amati... let's say it's the hometown of the violin. Music, mainly string music is everywhere. In other towns the signs in the street corners lead you to monuments, churches, museums... in Cremona signs lead you to the different luthiers' workshops. There are many of them, from many countries. Some of them keep the doors open so you can enter the workshop, see them at work and take some photos. Musicians from all over the world come here to commission their instruments.
At some moment we obviously came across with a bandstand in which a little group of young musicians played (really fine) Haendel's "Lascia ch'io pianga"...