Spaghetti gear

Or Idle Klutzy Earthy Artifacts 6th issue.
Previous issues: #1, #2, #3, and #4, and #5.


Thematic spaghetti fork.


Middle Age styled spaghetti fork.


Renaissance styled spaghetti fork.


Twirling spaghetti fork.
Someone stole me this idea (even before I've published it!!) and made this.
But mine is much better because it can twirl clockwise or counterclockwise (for left handed people) and it has 3 speeds: fast food, gourmet and diet. Ha!
(To be continued).

Idle Klutzy Earthy Artifacts (5th issue)

Previous issues: #1, #2, #3, and #4.


Serrated Plane for non flat surfaces.


Double chisel for 3D carving.


Non loosenable nut.


External screw nut.


Double axed screwdriver for hidden screws.


Double screwdriver for double speed screwing.


Creative plastering trowel.
(To be continued).

Buildups

These are all doodles made while watching TV.
I started to draw the first building and then I suddenly remembered my friends Leticia and Javier, a couple (in all senses) of architects that became illustrators, awesome illustrators, I should say. They have told me more than once that there's a hidden architect in me. I don't know if it's true but I like to hear it. This thoughts made me build and build up more and more buildings.
Days after, the second one was a response to the first. The following ones are alternatives to building and buildup. (To be continued)

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.

Crowd & snake v.1 (doodle)

I started this in november on a train between Lyon and Clermont-Ferrand and finished it on the way back. I put some watercolor while waiting on the airport. It has something to do with this, apart that both started as non planned doodles and suddenly found their way.

Merry X!

(X=Christmas, Hanukkah or whatever). Season Greetings! or Happy Holidays! if you prefer. This is an oldie I made some months ago, but since it was the end of the summer I've taken now the licence to post it again (with some photoshopping) for this season.
Merry X to you all!

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"...

Urban Sketchers

Urban Sketchers is a colective blog recently created by my pal Gabi Campanario in wich artists from all over the world post sketches of the life in their respective cities. Gabi was kind enough to invite me to join he group and here is mi first contribution.

It's rainy in Bologna so my first contribution for Urban Sketchers has been made comfortably drawing with the sketchbook leaning over the kitchen table. I tried to catch a little piece of blue sky between the clouds that put some strange colors on the nearby houses. I had already taken this view here, but then I looked straight from the window over the hills, this is about 45º to the left and much less bucolic. The center of the image is an strange military property, somekind of Area 51 alla bolognese. I've lived in this house for 3 years and I've seen just a couple of big trucks entering or leaving it. It's forbidden to park or even stop near and when somebody does it a soldier materializes as teletransported, throws you out and disappear. That's all the human life you can see around. You can't film or take photos but there are bills that advice you that they film and take photos of the surroundings. I imagine everyting is located underground because all you can see is a couple of little huts between some lonely trees.