The Collective - 3rd Batch

One image per session I attended. Other selected are avialable on the Flickr Lifedrawing album.

30 Days Art Challenge - Week 2

Ok, I'm excited for this (not really for the crappy compression that I put all my art under) But this were my 1st cat portraits made with Sketchbook Pro. I'm quite happy with this. Anyways, they're 2 cats, so they'll count for today too :-P

30 days art challenge - Week 1

I'm participating to a group of artist around the world that is encouraging eachother to do art for 30 days with the goal to challenge the onw abilities or learn new tecniques, digitally or traditionally. I cannot put here all the things I did because of work in progress, so I added more of my weekly life drawing at the collective :-)
Anyways, I tried a few new tecnique or subject, so I kept up with the challenge.

Sto partecipando ad un gruppo di artisti attorno al mondo che si sta incoraggiando a fare arte per 30 giorni, con l'obiettivo di migliorarsi e imparare nuove tecniche, sia tradizionali che digitali.
Non posso metter qui tutti i lavori che ho fatto perche' non sono finiti, dunque ho aggiunto qualche altro che ho fatto durante disegno dal vero questa settimana :-)
Alla fine, ho sempre provato nuove tecniche o nuovi soggetti, dunque ho mantenuto lo scopo della sfida.

Drawing pets

I had this idea that I had to improve my photoshop coloring skills, after looking at a number of artists blogs and tumblr. So I asked my friends to give me their pets photos and I did a couple of fast ones (they took me about 1 h 10 each). They're ok, but not what I had in mind. Well, I guess I need to draw more :-)

The Collective- 2nd batch

 Again, some other drawing from the Toronto Collective. For more drawing, you may refer to my flickr set. The Collective is actually a cool idea. A group of local artists set every week a meeting, to the place of one or the other, so every time is in a different part of the city. People bring food or drinks, they get a model which can be a friend, a member of the group, or a voulonteer model, and they spend 3 hours chatting and drawing, with some breaks, from 1 to 20 minute poses. The sessions are really entertaining and at the end everybody pass thier skechbook around, so anybody else can see the work done by the memebers of the goup, models included. To close up the evening, who can stay out later go and have dinner or a drink in a near by pub. Occasionally they organize art shows together. ITALIAN for the next batch ;-)

The other window - final

This is about what I had in mind. Really not precise on the proportion side. But I like the colors. These characters are Vera and Iale, of another more extensive project I'm going to do one day. Hopefully through some of these illustration I'll be able to achieve a style I'd be happy with and feel more self confident about finalizing it.

movies and sketches

I have little fortune in getting friends to willingly be a guinea pig for my caricature exercises. Safe for one of my colleagues, which by now occasionally simply hand me her notebook, a pencil, and makes me a big smile. Adorable. Other than that, I find better fortune in either watching TV or magazines. Here some of the ones I'm most happy with, which I traced back with a ink pen brush.

Jealousy

A fast Illustration for this idea I had.

the last minutes- revised.

 All right, finally the revised version of what I did last week, with brighter colors and fixed pose/proportions...
As for the boy, become a girl as was too feeble, but I like the new hair volume and kindness of this figure more. Hope you like this new version.

Toon caricatures

Oh well, some exercise to cartoon some friend. Please let me know if you'd like to be cartooned!

the last minutes

retake by Varethane (http://varethane.deviantart.com/)

Ok, this is an experiment for coloring with Sketchbook Pro, although I'm not really happy with this and I'd need some advice in order to make a more pleasant coloring. I think I'll do a version in wuatercolor and see how that will do. Please comment and critique!

Auguri Mamma!

Ecco un'illustrazione di un mio ricordo d'infanzia - childhood memory

The Collective

No, I didn't stop to draw with all that sewing!
I actually started to go to a collective life drawing here in Toronto, and I got to know a lot of cool local people that reminded me my old self. Finally back in track with some new life drawing!

the sun and the stars

preliminary illustration about reality and dreams.

adding color to my drawings

In the last few weeks I started adding lots of color to my watercolors. it's a mix of coincidence and learning. at Work (Guru Studio) we occasionally have internal masterclasses, where we can teach something we're master of, to our colleagues. That time was the turn of Marco Bucci, who told us in one lesson his coloring portrait process, and in the following lesson we had 1h to do the job ourselves. But oh! I forgot to bring paints. the only things I had at my desk were crayola pastels and my sketchbook. So well, I went anyways. He said something like "when light are warm, shadows are cold, so I add here a bit of purple..." I couldn't mix colors. Crayola don't admit much of mixing and half tones, so... I just added the colors as they were. More yellow where the light hit, more purple and blue and green in the shadows... it come out a beautiful rainbowny effect. so I liked it and I try to apply the same effect to my watercolors and digital paintings as well. I have to say I enjoy my artwork much more now. Try to believe!

Cucire i miei regali -Sewing gifts

Ho well, I didn't post for a while. Work got really busy at the end of summer and I guess I got caught in it. Anyhow I made some cute Christmas gift and so here the results

Mannaggia, non aggiorno il blog da un sacco di tempo! Il lavoro mi ha tenuta piu' impegnata del solito a partire da settembre, e immagino di essemi lascita trascinare da esso. Comunque, ho fatto qualche regalo carino per Natale, ed ecco qui i risultati :-)

we have a 3D printing blog!

http://www.two3dmonkeys.com/blog/

 I forgot to mention, in all my creative chaos that, together with kym, we have set up a 3D printing blog. We're looking to inform the public about what's 3D printing, keep updated with our experiments, and see if anybody is interested in our services.

Please visit and let us know what you think!

Texile Museum of Canada and Bata shoe Museum

 I have a new link for my Museum Sketching at the following page.
I'm still really enjoying the chance to use the CULTURAL ACCESS PASS and I'll try to keep sketching and visiting canadian history through this pass.
Both Bata and Texile museum change their exibition every few month, so this second time I visited both, I could see new things.
 The girl in the 20's dress is made up from pieces and bits seen in the Roaring 20ies room.

Trying out Sketchbook Pro

This is a good occasion to advertise a bunch of things.
about 2 month ago I went to a Schoolism masterclass with Jason Seiler. It was hosted in the Autodesk bulding here in Toronto, and they gave us a free copy of Sketchbook pro. So tonight I finally install it.
I have to say, I really like the way the brush react to the wacom pencil. I still didn't understand how to use most of the tools, but I think it won't take long.
I made this colored sketch after a pencil one I did to Marlo Meekins while she was talking at TAAFI about a month ago. You should check out her illustartions she's really funny and original.

Mailbag Pocket Duo!

Mailbag Pocket Duo!, a set on Flickr.

last winter I finally learnt to sew. I had some scraps and I bought some beautiful quart of yard quit fabric in Montreal (l'Effiloche) and checked online how to do a Mailbag pocket duo (from the book "One Yard Wonders") and did my own versions (you can see I made 2 different versions, it's about try and error process). There is a 3rd one, but I gave it to my mum :-)