Why must I turn back to certain places?

For example, I could do without my dentist's studio (actually, with any dentist's studio). This was my third visit in one year: too many, I find, even if it's always a place where you have some minutes to draw. That's the only thing that worth the time spent going there.
Old sketches are here and here.

You spend half of your life covering up

I've started a new sketchbook only with Drawings Of A Certain Kind.
Here are the first pages.







This is dedicated to Andrea, a great button artist.

(Almost) flat encephalogram

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Not so much ideas this days.

A Merry doodle Christmas

Christmas ends today, at least in Spain, where the Three Kings carried this night all his gifts, and Italy, where the Befana (an old witch whose name derives from Epifania) filled the socks with candies. In Spain today is a big big day for children, in Italy most of the gifts came with Babbo Natale (fat old white bearded man, red dressed, says "ho, ho, ho"... you know).
Picking up the tree is a sad moment for children. Turning off the lights and turn to everyday is hard to everybody.
And what does all this matter with this drawing?
Nothing.
I've just made it on the last days. Near the tree.

Winter holidays

I've spent the last days in Sesto, a real paradise for cross-country skiing. It was my first time and I had some forced landings, but I really enjoyed it and I think I'll repeat the experience.
Obviously, I made some sketches too.

This is the Baur Hotel, a wonderful building of the late 1800's, just in the shore of the Dobbiaco Lake (there is a fantastic ski trip around).

We found this poinsettia on our table at the Zum Klaus restaurant.

The food at Zum Klaus was really good, and the decoration had some funny touches like this...

...and this.

EDM #104 Again and again and again and again

Vacation is a busy time. Too many things to do, too many places to go, it's quite hard to find a moment to open the sketchbook. Meals are the best moment for me, I can talk while drawing so people around don't think I feel crabby, there's a table and there are usually good motifs to draw... or at least a couple of shakers to go on with this series (more shakers here).

And so this is Christmas...

Well this is a Christmas greeting card (or so).
I have a love-hate relationship with this season. Christmas has given me some of the best and the worse moments of my life. Most of the first happened when I was a child and so I keep a feeling of miss since it's impossible to feel that euphoria as an adult. My son made me try to give him the same mythic Christmas I had, and this took out some hidden feelings. Christmas is now a mix of naive good willing, gorgeous meals, and choral carols on one side, and shopping mall lightings (turned on in october) and chilling front pages on the other.
I can't do without this (not so) opposite points of view. I don't want to do without any of them.
Juj should say it's a little schizophrenic, and she should be right as usual.
Anyway, I guess I'm not so original, I bet many of you feel similar.

... and what have you drawn? Ehm..., nothing...
but here are a couple of presents:

this is from my Dr. Jeckill me:



and this is from my Mr. Hyde me:
http://www.joecartoon.com/games/11

Merry Christmas to you all.

Every Doodle Matters #9

"An organized chaos" or in other words, 100 challenges -or so- in one go. But people who love logical games -as me- could say that one of the missing challenges is just #9 since it's self-referential an then not included itself in the drawing. If this could be right then the title would be wrong so I could entitle it EDM #42 "something you are thankful for" (it's was a great day when I found this group), or EDM #61 "a group of 2 or more similar objects (what about 100 or so EDM Challenges?), or EDM #71 "something representing your favorite sport" (I used to love cricket, curling, petanque and extreme ironing, but EDM'ing is much better, even if not so calorie burning). Of course, there's so much inspiration I owe Andrea. Thank you!

In the verdant hills of Tuscany

The door on the left side is the entrance to our friends G&K's house, and the place is a little borgo called Bonazza, near Florence. We were here last weekend for our italian, english, spanish and of course american Thanksgiving. I made this sketch with the intention of adding some watercolor wash at home, but since I had used a not waterproof pen I couldn't do this way, so I put color with photoshop.

A coat of many colors, yellow green on either side

My old drawings chest seems to be bottomless. Obviously I don't post every relic I find here and there, but from time to time an old drawing catch my attention because of... I don't know what, and so I get through the embarrassment of showing my beginner drawings... and well... ladies & gentlemen... my first published cover. It was made in 1983 for a magazine about puzzles, logical games and recreational mathematics. As you can suppose by the theme, it was a very very little magazine and they payed me a very very little money, but I was very very glad anyway. (And finally we knew that The Thinker, is actually thinking about some hard logical problem proposed by the magazine he holds in hand. So naïf...)
It was made with black, red, blue, green, sepia and yellow inks. I used Gillot, Brandauer and Faber Castell nibs, a different one for each color. I've never repeated again this technique.