Home landscapes

The last summer we left Italy. On the months before I felt the almost compulsive need of drawing our home in Casalecchio, near Bologna. It was somehow a way for fixing it in my mind. Of course I took some photos and made a video, but you know... when you draw, you look and stop and live and –maybe– see the scene. When I take photos I feel I can't see all I want because the camera is between my eye and the scene. It's the camera that works but just taking data.

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

Non Place People

Many people prefer the shop in the shopping center, many other prefer the shop in the corner. My shop in the corner is a shopping center, what can I do. If I forget something and I must run to buy it, the closest place is the shopping centre.

This centre was made by Berlusconi in 1994, and it's an historic place because at the inauguration he announced that he would enter into politics (with the consequences we all know).

I don't love this place but I don't hate it. Maybe it's a non-place as Marc Augé call this kind of places, but it's plenty of life. Somekind of life.

It's not beautiful but it's real. When I cross its doors I feel like watching some kind of italian neo-neorealist film. Most of what happens today happens here in this places or non-places (in Italy and in many countries). Or it can be understood looking this film.

Pocket Sketchbook #7

My pocket sketchbook between april and july 2009. Almost all sketches where made from life in Bologna, Casalecchio, Ravenna and Vignola (Italy), Jávea and Gandía (Spain) and Porec (Croatia).
Music: Cesar Miró (1907-1999) "Todos vuelven", (Rubén Blades, Buscando América, 1984)

Kraft paper sketchbook

Customized kraft-paper sketchbook (I made the wire- binding on a copy service in order to open it 360º). It's been a mate for almost 6 months in which I filled it of every idea (or non-idea) comming to my head and/or my hand: scribbles, sketches, public life, portraits, TV drawings, still lifes, designs, projects and so on. Made in Bologna, Casalecchio, Jávea and Venezia between december 22, 2008 and june 6, 2009.
Music: Chauncey Olcott (1858-1932), "My Wild Irish Rose" (Keith Jarrett, piano, 1999)

Here & There

Sketchbook made with sheets of watercolor paper wire-binded on a copy service. Sketches made in Bologna, Casalecchio, Jávea, Ravenna and Vignola between march 03 and may 05 2009.
Music: Pino Daniele, "Lazzari felici" (Musicante, 1984)

Spring 2009 pocket sketchbook

Sketchbook made with sheets of a torn Moleskine sketchbook wire-binded on a copy service. It was my pocket sketchbook beetween march 25 and april 12, 2009. Sketches taken in Bologna, Casalecchio and Jávea.
Music: "Les Mots d'Amour" (Charles Dumont, music and Michel Rivgauche, lyrics), Edith Piaf (1960)

Winter 2009 pocket sketchbook

To make this sketchbook I cut some sheets of watercolor paper and made a wire-binding on a copy service. It came always with me till the last page was filled and contains drawings made in Bologna and Casalecchio between december 21, 2008 and march 25, 2009.
Music: Keb' Mo', "Am I Wrong?" (Keb' Mo', 1994)

Sketch & The City

I started this sketchbook on october 25 at the Bologna SketchCrawl. Then I decided to use it just for SketchCrawls and urban sketches for the Gabi Campanario's Urban Sketchers blog. It contains drawings made in Bologna, Casalecchio Lyon and Verona between october 25, 2008 and february 26, 2009.

Music: W. A. Mozart (1756-1791) "Eine Kleine Gigue" K. 574

(Mitsuko Uchida, piano, 1991)

Winter 2009 Sketches

Sketchbook completed between 21 december 2008 and 25 march 2009. All drawings were made in Bologna and Casalecchio. I used 3 Lamy fountain pens (extra fine, calligraphic 1 and 2 mm), 6 water brushes loaded with different watered fountain pen inks (except for the yellow that was aniline dye) and watercolors.

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21th SketchCrawl in Bologna

This SketchCrawl was planned worldwide for january 10, but here in Bologna we couldn't make it (someone was snowed under with work, someone was snowed under with flu, someone was snowed under with fear... to get actually snowed under with snow).
We decided to make an alternative SC last saturday and here are the sketches I made. There was many people from off-Bologna and many new faces. Why don't we make it more often?

More stuff here.

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.

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.

EDM #14 (3 versions)

This is what I see in the morning when I get up. Actually, when I get up I see almost nothing because everything is dark, this is what I see after putting up the blind.
I did it this morning and seems I was not attacked by an outburst of inspiration, so I tried 3 takes before giving up, here they are.
For a more objective, descriptive, realistic and scientific approach, see this.