When I would like to have done something myself it means that I really like that thing, that’s the case of Travel, a manga I’ve recently bought.

I really like the cover jacket, which hide in the inside a “secret” drawing.

Beside the good layout, that makes of this book also a nice object, the comic it self, if we can call it “comic”, is pushed to it’s limits, and it become something else, touching the edges of a pure art form.
The plot it’s completely without words and sounds, this privation makes the story be a sequence of uninterrupted actions, and even if there aren’t words to tell us which sounds or which thoughts are passing by the characters’ mind, we can figure it out on our own even stronger.
It feels like that the author Yuchi Yokoyama created a unique graphic language, where the lines of actions and the happenings trough the story intersect creating panels of pure abstraction.

The other recommendation, is also a manga, but in this case a very classic one, that I’ve just discover recently.
Oishinbo is a jorney into the culinary Japanese’s culture, where two masters of cooking challenge themeselfs in a series of cooking battles.
Trough this comic you can understand how important is the food in Japanese culture which is one of my favorites together with the Italian cuisine. This manga works as a real cooking book, in fact the detailed explanation of the dishes can aloud you to really make them.

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Yesterday I went to the Amsterdam’s presentation of the book All City Writers, in little words all you have to know about forty years of Graffiti in Europe and not only.
Andrea Caputo, the author of this book contacted me a couple of years ago, asking for a contribution. I have to admit I was a bit skeptic, like: “do we need another book about the subject?”.
So far All City Writers is one of the best graffiti book, not only for the contents, which are richness; there’s an incredible work of research behind the pages, but also for the way those contents are presented, in a thoughtful layout, clear and functional.
So, I had to reconsider my initial skepticism, this is a must have book, if you are interested on the subject and either if you just like very well done products.

And of course I had my copy signed by some of the old school Amsterdam’s buddies.

And if you want to know more about All City Writers, there’s a very nice web-site too:
www.allcitywriters.com

Tags: book, graffiti.

I’ve just finished this painting.

Tags: illustration, manga, painting.

I’ve never thought I would have ever seen this man (Luca Toni) with Roma shirt.
I’ve always consider Toni a clumsy player, but he scores, and today against Genova he did two goals his firsts with Roma. Both of the goals have been inspired by Mirko Vucinic which on the contrary is a player with magical feet, I love the way he moves and even if he might be an attackers that doesn’t scores a lot he’s a key player in Roma attack, he’s a continuous threat for the opponents.
Roma in this last years have been a team with very skilled player that likes to play the ball, and i guess they needed a player like Toni who can balance the team with some concreteness.

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I’m working on a series of stickers, and designing some manga style pin-up for it, getting inspired by that particular type of anime called hentai, just type it on Google and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
I’ve always liked the Japanese approach to drawing, and I wanted to confront myself with it, their style is strongly attached to geometries, and the construction guide lines appear to influence more than in other style the result of the drawing.
especially with drawing sexy girls, if something doesn’t work properly on the construction of the drawing, it ends to appear like you’ve made some distorted woman that doesn’t look sexy at all.
Even if I’m pretty maniac of construction techniques I found this quite a challenging work to do.

The hair are quite difficult, and easily they can look unnatural, like worms that go around.
Ayes are a key point, they have to look deep and very humid.

Tags: anime, hentai, illustration.

Tags: illustration.

We might be a little slow, but we’re getting to the point of having Manga Don’t Like Wine printed.
We’ve finished selecting the artworks submitted, and decided the page order:

I’ve printed and correct the drafts:

Beside the artists we asked directly to participate at the project, here’s the list of the others we chose from the submission we received:

• Emeli Martensson, Luca Cagnassi, Mikael Dalnas
• Sedo, Imos, Jeris
• Jose, Gabriele, Mauro
• Hero!, Funboy, Ven17
• Marco, Domenico, Valentina
• Yocca, Domenico, Kix

Thanks to all of you for the grate work!

Tags: book, Why Style.

Joe and me, participated at the Amsterdam biennale.
We represented our city, Roma.
For more information about it visit the Mediamatic web site.

Tags: installation, Why Style.

Per la prima volta, mi sono soffermato ad ammirare la bellezza del Duomo di Milano.

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The other day I went to a couple of offices to do some little things. I went to the bank, and the telephone company, in both places they told me they couldn’t do anything and they gave me a telephone number to call. This system is a tricky way for them to make money on phone calls. In fact after two minutes listening to recorded voices I spent about two euros to call, and what they told me was that I had to go to their office again.
That sounds really like a trap to squeeze money, companies just bounce costumers that need help to operators at call centers.
Fortunately life is not only bureaucracy and nonsense phone calls, there’s also Roma that won Lazio in the derby!

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