Twisted hammer, very useful to recycle twisted nails.
(To be continued).
20 June 2008
Idle Klutzy Earthy Artifacts (4th issue)
Previous issues here, here and here (but this doesn't end here).
Double handsaw, very useful for picture and door frames since it makes 2 opposite cuts at 45º from the bar... simultaneously!
Collapsible handsaw, very practical since handsaws use to be the biggest tools and can't get into the toolbox.
Twisted hammer, very useful to recycle twisted nails.
Safety pincers, specially designed to avoid any kind of pinches (to get hurt you must be a real masochist or absolutely idiot).
Wedge bolt, for an ultra strong adjustment: the harder you screw on, the better it fits.
2 way bolt, suitable for right and left handed people since you can screw it on clockwise or counterclockwise... it's up to you!
Twisted hammer, very useful to recycle twisted nails.
08 June 2008
Ever bean a leef turtle?
This is my contribution to Juj's japanese moleskine for the Moly_X_12. When I received Juj's moley I was working on an ad campaign for which the art director wanted a sort of atmosphere on a 1960'ish style. I seized the opportunity to reopen my old books by Mouse & Kelley, Victor Moscoso and obviously Robert Crumb. The first sketches (made when I had no idea of how to continue Juj's drawing) where considered "too acid and psychedelic" so I just did a cheesy op-art design that pleased everybody (but me). The agency cancelled all I really wanted to draw but give me the idea of what to do for Juj's moly. Surely it has been better this way.
30 May 2008
Back to work
After a couple of lazy months here I am, back again to the work that really counts: creating Idle Klutzy Earthy Artifacts that will better all our lives.
"Feather Hammer", so light that even great-great-grandmother will use it.
"Disposable Hammer", very suitable for do-it-yourself emergency equipment.
Other artifacts here, here and here.
(To be continued)
"Feather Hammer", so light that even great-great-grandmother will use it.
"Disposable Hammer", very suitable for do-it-yourself emergency equipment.
Other artifacts here, here and here.
(To be continued)
26 May 2008
09 May 2008
Blue & Green
On a recent post I talked about my attraction/fear about brushes and how Enrique Flores had helped me to go ahead. We met three weeks ago, and from then on I haven't stopped drawing straight with the brush. Here is my first complete sketchbook made walking on the wild side.
This was actually a Canson sketchbook which cover got torn. I made a new one with an old folder, and since it was blue and green I decided to draw just in blue and green. I filled a Niji brush with Parker blue ink and a Tria brush with Parker green and made all the sketches from nature or from TV. I started it saturday, april 19 and finished yesterday. Never drawn this fast.
Maybe for all you brush addicts this is trivial, but I've been always glued to fine liners and this is been for me like bungee jumping. Woah!
This was actually a Canson sketchbook which cover got torn. I made a new one with an old folder, and since it was blue and green I decided to draw just in blue and green. I filled a Niji brush with Parker blue ink and a Tria brush with Parker green and made all the sketches from nature or from TV. I started it saturday, april 19 and finished yesterday. Never drawn this fast.
Maybe for all you brush addicts this is trivial, but I've been always glued to fine liners and this is been for me like bungee jumping. Woah!
04 May 2008
I lived here
I published this post on may 2008 and the title was "I live here".
Now, september 2010, I live in Barcelona and the title is not true anymore.
I loved so much this house.
This is my house. Or more exactly, the building that contains my house which is actually just the full colored zone of the following picture.
These are the windows of my studio and the living room. The kitchen and the bedrooms are on the opposite side, from where I can see this view of the Colli Bolognesi (I made some sketches last summer). From the window of my studio I can see this:
I drew this sketch from one of the two tables in the center of the pic (the left side one) with a Copic Drawing Pen for the line work and Copic Markers for coloring. The dark dome is a sports arena, and on the right side there is an Ikea store (a tiny logo is visible) where I use to go walking to buy pickles and take some mad ideas (sometimes I even buy some furniture).
And for those who have even more time to lose and want to know where in the world is all this stuff, here is a map.
29 April 2008
Hometown and brushes
On my last trip to Madrid a couple of weeks ago, apart from shooting some of my old and almost forgotten works (they are shown on the previous 2 posts), I found some opportunities to take some sketches.
I made this at the boarding gate of the airport before the depart from Bologna. I used my new Niji brush, India ink and watercolors over a rough made with a ballpoint pen.
I made 2 sketches of my mother: she's alone on the first one...
...and with my son Fabio on the second one. Both were made with the same ballpoint pen and watercolors, but I used the ink brush just on the last one.
This is the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas which is supposed to mean for bullfighting the same as the Teatro alla Scala means for opera. I've never been too interested in bullfighting so I've never payed too much attention to this building when I used to live in Madrid, but when I passed by the other day I couldn't not to draw it.
Drawing directly with brushes is something like riding a roller coaster: there's some fear before but so much satisfaction after. The problem for me is that the comparison would be better with parachutes than with roller coasters: the fear often blocks me and I need some rough or guidelines under before I take the brush. It's because of this that I admire so much artists like Gabi Campanario or Enrique Flores.
After almost one year of comments and messages, I met Enrique for the first time on this trip (we had a fantastic lunch that lasted... over midnight!). As a result of this long and funny conversation... I finally jumped for the first time. Thank you, Enrique!
These were my first straight-with-the-brush sketches, made on the plane turning back home. From then on I haven't stopped "jumping", soon I'll let you see.
I made this at the boarding gate of the airport before the depart from Bologna. I used my new Niji brush, India ink and watercolors over a rough made with a ballpoint pen.
I made 2 sketches of my mother: she's alone on the first one...
...and with my son Fabio on the second one. Both were made with the same ballpoint pen and watercolors, but I used the ink brush just on the last one.
This is the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas which is supposed to mean for bullfighting the same as the Teatro alla Scala means for opera. I've never been too interested in bullfighting so I've never payed too much attention to this building when I used to live in Madrid, but when I passed by the other day I couldn't not to draw it.
Drawing directly with brushes is something like riding a roller coaster: there's some fear before but so much satisfaction after. The problem for me is that the comparison would be better with parachutes than with roller coasters: the fear often blocks me and I need some rough or guidelines under before I take the brush. It's because of this that I admire so much artists like Gabi Campanario or Enrique Flores.
After almost one year of comments and messages, I met Enrique for the first time on this trip (we had a fantastic lunch that lasted... over midnight!). As a result of this long and funny conversation... I finally jumped for the first time. Thank you, Enrique!
These were my first straight-with-the-brush sketches, made on the plane turning back home. From then on I haven't stopped "jumping", soon I'll let you see.
26 April 2008
Hanging-on bathroom art #1
More from my last trip to Madrid: a couple of years ago my mother talked me about some pictures she was looking for to put in some wall on the bathroom.
–"I still haven't found what I'm looking for" she said. Even if she don't speak a word of english I thought about an improbable interest of my mother in U2 and told her I should try to draw something.
For a bathroom... bath scenes, of course. And better if made with washes of liquid watercolor.
I framed the drawings, made a pack with a pretty colored paper and took it to Madrid for Christmas. She was really pleased and the pictures still hang on in her bathroom.
–"I still haven't found what I'm looking for" she said. Even if she don't speak a word of english I thought about an improbable interest of my mother in U2 and told her I should try to draw something.
For a bathroom... bath scenes, of course. And better if made with washes of liquid watercolor.
I framed the drawings, made a pack with a pretty colored paper and took it to Madrid for Christmas. She was really pleased and the pictures still hang on in her bathroom.
19 April 2008
Father, son, writing, handwriting
On my last visit to Madrid I made some pics of this pieces at my parent's house. I often make this kind of gifts and forget that even if I'm not the owner, they are always a work of mine.
I couldn't say how many of them I've absoultely forgotten through the years.
I did and gave this to my father on Christmas 1988. It's a handwriting transcription of "Arte Poética", a poem Jorge Luis Borges wrote in 1960 about time and changes, and passages and all those trivialities.
It's a particular poem since its rhymes are not made with similar words but with just identical words that subtly change their meaning.
For all you barbarian language speakers, I've found this english version on Matt Salomon's blog (really interesting). Thanks Matt and William S. Mervin for the translation.
Ars Poetica by J. L. Borges
.
To look at the river made of time and water
And remember that time is another river,
To know that we are lost like the river
And that faces dissolve like water.
To be aware that waking dreams it is not asleep
While it is another dream, and that the death
That our flesh goes in fear of is that death
Which comes every night and is called sleep.
To see in the day or in the year a symbol
Of the days of man and of his years,
To transmute the outrage of the years
Into a music, a murmur of voices, and a symbol,
To see in death sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold—such is poetry,
Which is immortal and poor. Poetry
returns like the dawn and the sunset.
At times in the evenings a face
Looks at us out of the depths of a mirror;
Art should be like that mirror
Which reveals to us our own face.
They say that Ulysses, sated with marvels,
Wept tears of love at the sight of his Ithaca,
Green and humble. Art is that Ithaca
Of green eternity, not of marvels.
It is also like the river with no end
That flows and remains and is the mirror of one same
Inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
And is another, like the river with no end.
Time after on 1995, when me and Roberta where waiting Fabio's birth, my father wrote this sonnet to his first grandson then yet to come. In 1996 I transcribed it as a cover for an album with photos of Fabio's first year and gave it to my parents. Since black letter is beautiful but not the maximum of legibility (it was not a fortunate choice I think now), I transcribe it:
Del recóndito desván de mi memoria
voy a desempolvar los viejos sones
para alegrar tu infancia con canciones,
con fábulas, con cuentos, con historias...
Abriré todas las puertas a la euforia
echando a volar mi fantasía,
y llevando tu mano de la mía
de tu mundo infantil haré las glorias.
Espero tu llegada y mientras tanto
suavizaré la arista de mis brazos,
mi tosca mano asedará su tacto.
Calentaré mi pecho en tierno abrazo
para arrullar tu sueño con mi canto
cuando duermas dulcemente en mi regazo.
This is my –barbarian, I know– translation into english.
From the remote attic of my memory
I will dust the ancient sounds
To brighten up your childhood with songs,
with fables, with tales, with stories...
I'll open all the doors to euphoria
Letting my fantasy fly off
And with your hand in my hand
I'll make glory of your children's world.
I wait for your arrival and meanwhile
I'll make soft the edge of my arms
My rough hand will silk its touch
I'll warm up my chest in a tender hug
To lull asleep your dream with my chant
When you sweetly sleep over my lap.
I couldn't say how many of them I've absoultely forgotten through the years.
I did and gave this to my father on Christmas 1988. It's a handwriting transcription of "Arte Poética", a poem Jorge Luis Borges wrote in 1960 about time and changes, and passages and all those trivialities.
It's a particular poem since its rhymes are not made with similar words but with just identical words that subtly change their meaning.
For all you barbarian language speakers, I've found this english version on Matt Salomon's blog (really interesting). Thanks Matt and William S. Mervin for the translation.
Ars Poetica by J. L. Borges
.
To look at the river made of time and water
And remember that time is another river,
To know that we are lost like the river
And that faces dissolve like water.
To be aware that waking dreams it is not asleep
While it is another dream, and that the death
That our flesh goes in fear of is that death
Which comes every night and is called sleep.
To see in the day or in the year a symbol
Of the days of man and of his years,
To transmute the outrage of the years
Into a music, a murmur of voices, and a symbol,
To see in death sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold—such is poetry,
Which is immortal and poor. Poetry
returns like the dawn and the sunset.
At times in the evenings a face
Looks at us out of the depths of a mirror;
Art should be like that mirror
Which reveals to us our own face.
They say that Ulysses, sated with marvels,
Wept tears of love at the sight of his Ithaca,
Green and humble. Art is that Ithaca
Of green eternity, not of marvels.
It is also like the river with no end
That flows and remains and is the mirror of one same
Inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
And is another, like the river with no end.
Time after on 1995, when me and Roberta where waiting Fabio's birth, my father wrote this sonnet to his first grandson then yet to come. In 1996 I transcribed it as a cover for an album with photos of Fabio's first year and gave it to my parents. Since black letter is beautiful but not the maximum of legibility (it was not a fortunate choice I think now), I transcribe it:
Del recóndito desván de mi memoria
voy a desempolvar los viejos sones
para alegrar tu infancia con canciones,
con fábulas, con cuentos, con historias...
Abriré todas las puertas a la euforia
echando a volar mi fantasía,
y llevando tu mano de la mía
de tu mundo infantil haré las glorias.
Espero tu llegada y mientras tanto
suavizaré la arista de mis brazos,
mi tosca mano asedará su tacto.
Calentaré mi pecho en tierno abrazo
para arrullar tu sueño con mi canto
cuando duermas dulcemente en mi regazo.
This is my –barbarian, I know– translation into english.
From the remote attic of my memory
I will dust the ancient sounds
To brighten up your childhood with songs,
with fables, with tales, with stories...
I'll open all the doors to euphoria
Letting my fantasy fly off
And with your hand in my hand
I'll make glory of your children's world.
I wait for your arrival and meanwhile
I'll make soft the edge of my arms
My rough hand will silk its touch
I'll warm up my chest in a tender hug
To lull asleep your dream with my chant
When you sweetly sleep over my lap.
10 April 2008
Garabatos
"Garabatos" (in english it sounds more or less like gah-rah-báh-tohs) is a wonderful spanish word that corresponds to doodles in english, scarabocchi in italian, gargots in catalan, rabiscos in portuguese, griffonages or gribouillis in french, gekritzel in german, rabbel in norwegian, and каляки-маляки (kalyaki-malyaki) or каракули (karakuli) in russian. (New languages are welcome).Some weeks ago I decided to open a sketchbook just for garabatos. After deep reflection and using all my originality, creativity and fantasy, I entitled it "Garabatos". It is the 5th sketchbook I have in this moment. The others are the Big Partner and the Little Partner that suply most of my posts and are the only that I carry with me, Skeched Memories and DOACK.
Here are the first entries.
Here are the first entries.
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