Dinosaurs...

Here is a WIP of a little pet triceratops for Bella.
She is head over hills for dinosaurs. We have  a funny pop up book about them and her favorite are triceratops and the T.Rex (lurking in the back). She likes the T. Rex, because of its sharp teeth that chomp chomp chomp...but she does not realize (because we are not telling her yet) that he would sooner dine on triceratops than with it. Ah, blessed ignorance....

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas. We were plague by the flu, but we managed to still have fun... 

Have a great end of the year and may 2014 bring you joy, love, and lots of happy moments!

Happy Holidays

I like to roam in Home Goods looking for pans, rugs and toys or books for Bella. Sometimes they have interesting frames. The other day I found one that is cute. It's square and powder blue and has a nice ribbon of the same color to hang it. For once, I decided to make a drawing to fit the frame, rather than go crazy  looking for frames that would fit my irregular drawings. It's been snowing and the holidays approach, so I though to make a festive little thing to share here and then add to our Christmas decorations.

It's a 2.5x2.5 inches drawing on my beloved Fabriano watercolor paper done with Copic Markers, watercolor pencils for the tiniest details (like the tree needles), and white gel pen for the highlights.

Of course, the Northern Europe celebration of St. Lucia (December 13) with a procession of children holding candles lead by a girl with a crown of candles is my inspiration for this piece. I have always been fascinated by this tradition. I must have seen it for the first time in some movie long ago. The image of the tiny lights in the darkness and the white little figures walking among pines and firs in the cold winter night has a dream quality that vividly impressed my imagination. That's maybe because in Genova we rarely had snow and Christmas was a rather grey-rainy day most of the times...not vey romantic or magical, really. So, the idea of snow landscapes was very appealing to me.
Needless to say, now that I have plenty of snow here in Illinois, I think longingly of the comparatively warm Decembers of my hometown. It's all a matter of perspective! ;)

I wish you all the sweetest, happiest holidays. May the love of your family and friends keep you warm and cozy this December!

Sub Rosa

It's done! I've been working hard during the holidays to finish it...here it is finally.

For once, there was no drama and everything went pretty smoothly: I added layer after layer of color, fixing things here and there as I went without stressing out too much. True enjoyment!

 Now I have a couple of small drawings in mind for Bella's room plus a new big project work related that I will not probably going to show here, at least at the beginning...but I'll come back to this series as soon as I can (taking advantage of the days off around Christmas).
Talk to you soon!

I hope you all had a fun Thanksgiving (or, for those outside the States a restful weekend ;)).

Weekend update

Getting there!

By the way, with all this painting of ordered gardens and roses, I suddenly felt the need to clean up the backyard rose shrub. It was a mess. It had not been pruned in years, so I snipped my way to the core of the plant. Now I am crossing my fingers in hope I did not exceed what's good for next year's blooming. The rose branches look rather neat, now, but my husband expressed a certain level of skepticism at my zealous clipping. I am more optimistic, though. This year we had very few flowers, so I figure next year can only get better.  Let's hope so! :)

Coloring....

Ok, here is the promised update. It's not much, but I am proceeding cautiously. To give you an idea, it took me a couple of hours (while watching Iron Man 3 with my husband...not very poetic or attuned to the theme of the drawing, but time is precious...;)) colored the central  more prominent rose. Now I am getting a bit faster with the other roses, because I figured out the technique I need to use.

I like my roses very much, for once. I liked the fairies very much too at the beginning, but I am not so sure of it anymore. Their skin color is quite flat and I believe I need to work more on it to bring the little creatures to life. BTW, notice that this time I started from the main characters! ;)

Have a great rest of the week!

Winter is coming...

Hi there!

The weather has been rather wintery these past days. Yesterday morning I realized that the magnolia tree that was still splendidly green a couple of days earlier had profoundly felt the change in temperature. Two images came to mind...one of a lady decked in jewels and the other, much more somber, of a very famous Italian poem about the fragility of life...

Si sta come d'autunno sugli alberi le foglie. Here we are like the leaves, in Autumns. So wrote the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti  referring to the condition of the soldiers in the trenches during WWI. They are really just barely hanging in there...

My in-laws have departed and returned to the warmer shores of Italy, we have had to take care of a few things in the house, and I am cautiously coloring my Sub Rosa drawing.
Soon I'll post what I have been doing so far...

Have a warm weekend everybody!

PS: I just realized I had the wrong title on for a while...I changed my mind half way through about what I wanted to talk about and then forgot to modify the title! ;)

Almost done with the inking...

I am looking forward to color this...