Going hi tech

After many working hours from the design board and huge amounts of money, sweat and talent invested, here is our new long waited WC Holder 2.0.
Someone proposed to call it iHolder but it was decided that such name could be too gorish.


Now seriously. I didn't got satisfied with the WC Holder 1.0 (see this link) and I remained wondering how could I improve it.

Then one day I saw a set of methacrylate photo holders as these:


I bought the entire set (about 10 euros in a Carrefour hypermarket) and took the smallest one...


...glued a couple of fridge magnets on it...


...and that's all. No more steps.

The palette of the WC box is also a new version (see the old one on this link). Now I'm using just the 3 basic but unsaturated colors: indigo instead of blue, burnt sienna instead of red and yellow ochre (more exactly quinacridone gold) instead of yellow, all them from Winsor & Newton.

The comparison between the version 1.0 in cardboard and 2.0 in methacrylate needs no further explanations.

For the device at work here are a couple of pictures made by Víctor Martínez "Swasky".

Exhibition opening

Some days ago Romina Bruscia, a fellow sketcher, inaugurated in Bologna an exhibition of her works.
I went with some friends and took some sketches.

En español en Urban Sketchers Spain

Radiator

Now that it seems I'll leave this house on the next months I suddenly want to draw every corner.

En español en De vuelta con el cuaderno

Enough was enough some time ago

I made this drawings a couple of weeks ago on a demonstration of Il Popolo Viola (the Purple People). Seems that finally some italians are waking up of the Berlusconi's sleep, seeing that it was always a smiling nightmare and that they are in danger.

Just one sample: tomorrow there will be a regional election and while Mr. B. banned all political debates on TV 3 weeks ago, yesterday he made speeches and interviews in prime time on 5 (of 7) national TV channels.

Am I wrong or this is some kind of new fascism?

blogged at urban sketchers.

Cacharritos

Cacharrito (it sounds more or less kah-cha-rree-toh) is more or less the same as cachivache.

These are some more I've found here and there at home: a wooden hen shaped pencil sharpener (one of the very first my son had); a little shell he found in Palinuro in summer 2003; a beautiful cheap porcelain box of uncertain origin; a tin legged pot 1/10 scaled (60 cm in real life) that comes from my grand mother and was very old in the 60's when I was a child (my favorite cachivache) , a tiny round alabaster box I stoled from my parents house and an uncertain swinging head animal I bought in Guadalajara (Mexico).

Cachivaches (spanish), tchotchkes or pishifkes (yiddish), knickknacks (english), ıvır zıvır (turkish), bugigangas (portuguese). More languages are welcome.

Cachivaches

Cachivache (it sounds more or less kah-chee-vah-cheh) is a fantastic spanish word that means piece of old junk. Some days ago I took a walk at home drawing some of the cachivaches I have. I love so much many of them but I'm not sure how long some others will last (actually I'm not sure how they arrived and I wonder why they live on my shelves).

In this page there is a pot from IKEA, a devil shaped pen holder, a glass candlestick from my grand mother, an elephant puppet from India, a duck shape badge from Cuba, a wooden methane molecule shaped massage gadget, a mysterious wooden fish nobody remember how arrived home but that I like so much, a wooden woman figure from Kenya bought in Rome by my parents, an old counter bell, a little rolling stone my son gave me when he was 6 years old as if it was a gold nugget, a house shaped anti stress toy, a bilboquet from Paris, a calabrian liquorice box, a french porphyry egg, and a little glass ashtray from Naples.

Cachivaches (spanish), tchotchkes or pishifkes (yiddish), knickknacks (english), ıvır zıvır (turkish). More languages are welcome.

A day at the (model car) races

Some time ago I went with my son to a Model & Hobby Fair. A lot of stuff, from some amazing huge scale models made with Lego pieces to some not so pleasant war games :P .

I've always loved propeller planes and I remembered when I was a kid and used to mount scale models and I should had spent some more looking at some Fokker DR1, Sopwith Camel or Mitsubishi Zero, but my son dragged me to the car racing area, where some really amazing remote control models were running.

We passed a lot of time and I had the opportunity of making some sketches since I was not too interested on the races.

Seeing all that boys and adult men (the few women at the fair were mostly wives and fiancees) with all those expensive toys made me think about the difference between the good old need of playing and the Peter Pan syndrome.

Anyways, even if this is not my cup of tea, it was a funny afternoon.

blogged at urban sketchers.

Casalecchio Municipal Library

I love this place. I use to go once a week to take and leave something and not only books. The dvd section is really good: many movies from Almodóvar and Spielberg to Eisenstein and Griffith, but also many movies of classic, jazz and rock live concerts. There is a selected comic section too.

Almost everything I read in italian comes from this library.

Old friends

I drew this while waiting for the bus. We were about 10 people and at a certain point I realized I was was the only one under 70.

Old friends, winter companions, the old men

Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sun

The sounds of the city sifting through trees

Settles like dust on the shoulders of the old friends.

Can you imagine us years from today,

Sharing a parkbench quietly

How terribly strange to be seventy

Old friends, memory brushes the same years,

Silently sharing the same fears

Mr. Paul Simon (that Paul Simon) is surely unaware of the help he gave me on making this post. Apart from the words he once wrote and I just typed today, I actually had this song in mind while drawing this sketches.

En español en urban sketchers spain

Closed books

The last one -so far- of the series of drawings from old doodles (other drawings of this series: "Little houses", "Dirty dishes", "1.001 faces" and "Crowd and snake").

This is the doodle page I improvised while watching TV:
New tracing after scanning the doodles:

From tracing paper to watercolor paper using a light box (actually and x-ray viewer):

Ink linework:

Final result after adding some watercolors:

STATS

Books: so many.

Data: a lot.

Knowledge: some.

Wisdom: uncertain.

Prints on sale here.

Home sweet home

Sometimes tight deadlines on my work don't allow me to take the time to sketch out from home. When this happens i often feel the need of taking a break of some minutes from drawing storyboards on the tablet and draw some sketches on paper. In such a little time I just can do sone quick takes of my home. Here are a some of them, all made in the last months.

The chair Roberta uses to work on the computer.


An angle of the living room with my favorite armchair.


My bedroom. I had a sudden impulse, so this was the first thing I did that day (apart having breakfast).


My working angle. This was really a quick break from work, I did not even stand up from the chair. There's another view of this here.

Little houses

Another one of the series of drawings from old doodles (other drawings of this series: "Dirty dishes", "1.001 faces" and "Crowd and snake").

This is the doodle page I improvised while watching TV:
New tracing after scanning the doodles:

Ink linework using a light box.

Final result after adding some watercolors:

STATS

Houses: So many.

Offices: unknown.

Streets: unknown.

People: unknown

Free space: 0.

Prints on sale here.

Before the 25th SketchCrawl

On the same week of the 25th SketchCrawl I happened to pass twice near the places of our meeting. I could say that I had started my sketching and crawling a couple of days before the actual date.

This was taken while waiting at the entrance of Sala Borsa Library. The tents at the center were being mounted for a fair about chocolate that should start some days after.

We were just 3 people on the bus when I made this: the driver, the lady with the greenish coat that phoned by the central door, and yours faithfully. I started drawing just on stops and traffic lights, but at some moment I forgot to take care of shaking. I think the drawing came more "real" because of this.

This is one of the classic sights of Bologna: the Fountain of Neptune seen through the gallery of Palazzo Re Enzo.

Dirty dishes

Another of the series of drawings from old doodles.


This is the doodle page I improvised while watching TV:


New tracing after scanning the doodles:

Ink linework using a light box.

Final result after adding some watercolors:

STATS

Saucepans: hundreds.

Glasses: thousands.

Dishes: millions.

Cutlery: billions.

Dirt: tons.

Prints on sale here.