Poetry in lines and colors

This week's Illustration Friday topic suggested me this illustration, which is included in the Sketchbook I am preparing to participate to the Sketchbook Project 2012. By 31st January 2012 my 16-illustrations-sketchbook will leave Italy to join the other thousands sketchbooks from all over the world in the Brooklyn Art Library in New York. From April 2012 all sketchbooks will begin an exciting World Tour... keep in touch for the tour dates...

Long before the Halloween celebration was invented, European literary tradition was populated by scary figures, very often with criminal intentions towards the unhappy kids who came across them. One of these figures is the Baba Jaga, a terrible witch from the Russian popular tradition. Fortunately the little girl was given a magic comb with the power of making trees grow in a second, so she could run away and avoid being baked by the old lady! These two illustrations have been published in  Canada in the volume 100 Illustrations Annual 2011 (Diana Evans Editions)

I think this 1985 drawing fits well with this week’s Illustration Friday topic. “The Awakening o f Mirrors” is freely based upon a short novel by Argentinean poet and writer Jorge Luis Borges. I read this novel long time ago and I can’t remember it very well, I just remember it told about figures in mirrors invading our world and they passed through mirrors at night while every one was asleep. The first living thing that started this surrealist invasion was a fish. For the original drawing I just used china black ink on white paper using a pen nib together with a very thin paint brush. Since I found just a bad quality image of this drawing I revisited it for the submission by adding a computer touch of colour. Hope you enjoy the image!

Italy, the land of opera duets! Violetta and Alfredo in Verdi's Traviata, Puccini's Turandot and Prince Calaf, the exhilarating cats duet by Rossini and many, many others. This is my personal interpretation of this week's topic: it is a sort of intellectual duet, in a timeless setting a man and a woman are sharing some secret we are not allowed to know and behind them, in the dark background, a little window over the things to come...