Happy birthday Ettore!! 2/2/2015

Ettore 

10x10 inches

Acrylics on canvas.

And finally Ettore is here !

Well done to the new mommy Stefania for delivering the baby exactly on the day I was bidding on :) the prize for the winner was the change of first diaper....well! I am sure it happened already! so so so sorry for missing out on my prize :)

Congratulations to the neo-parents Pietro and Stefania.... you will be amazing parents! Love you guys!!xxx

Can't wait to see the new addiction to the Gargiulo family!

Book cover project, part 1. Picking a scene! Alice down the rabbit hole.

One of the project for my "Concept, technique and illustration class" at AAU is making a book cover for a book of our our choice.

I decided to go for a English classic : Alice in the wonderland. Written in 1865 is still very popular with adults as well as children...and is one of my favorite book!

For my book cover I choose to draw a scene from the first chapter,  Alice is running after the white rabbit and she follows him into the hole.

 (click on the link if you wish to read the first chapter in full! https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rgs/alice-I.html  )

Deciding which scene to draw was kind easy, not so much deciding how to portray it, so I went through some sketches, here they are.

And I chose the last one! Now more work on this image! :)

Enjoy today!

 “I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Back to class: Head drawing, experienced models.

This week was my back to school week...I am slowly readjusting to the early wake up, the commuting and the homework load.
Today I had my first head drawing class...and I totally LOVED IT.
One model in the morning and model in the afternoon, around 2 hours and half for pose, red and white pencil on toned grey paper.
I havent been practicing direct portrait in over two years so let's call today a warm up! I am very pleased with the final drawings.

HIM 

and HER:

Apparently we started today with more experienced models and every week we will be drawing always younger models... VERY COOL!

looking forward to the next class already!

Off to some nice dinner, walking the dog and then chillaxing on the sofa!

Ettore, Vector drawing

Ettore!!

Digital drawing with Illustrator.

 Ettore is behaving well :) thank you Stefi!!! Giving me plenty of time to work on his welcome present :)

This is the digital drawing finishes a couple of days ago, now I am painting the same on a 10x10inches canvas, is taking longer than expected! 

The Academy started again this week and I am already overwhelmed with homework and new projects, but is all very exciting!

In the mean time we have been very fortunate here at Ocean Beach, enjoying a very summery weekend with amazing sunsets.

Here are just a couple of pictures  :

Ettore, work in progress!

For the past couple of weeks we had some family visiting us over here and there was no time at all left for art making ! Not a free minute, believe me!!
But I am back to normality now and I am currently working on a digital drawing.
Is taking me some time since I was a bit out of practice but I am slowly getting there!


Step 1:
 pencil  drawing

Step 2:
vector drawing with Illustrator:

This is what I have at the moment:

Back to work now! Need to be quick!
I wanna be finished before Ettore decide to come out :)

The Chemistry of love part one: Dopamine, Oil on canvas 9x12 inches

The chemistry of love: Dopamine.

9x12 inches

oil on canvas

 Valentine's is approaching and I started a new series of painting about the chemicals that make us so crazy in love.

The first one is Dopamine. This chemical stimulates 'desire and reward' by triggering and intense rush of pleasure. It has the same effect on the brain as taking cocaine!
Researchers says that signs of surging dopamine are : increased energy, less need for sleep or food, focused attention and exquisite delight in smallest detail of the novel relationship.
In a nutshell Dopamine is thought to be the "pleasure chemical", producing a feeling of bliss.



I' ll be not be painting for 2 weeks or so, we have some family&friends coming over from Europe and I will be super busy doing the tourist guide over here : ).
Hopefully I ll find some time for sketching! That would make me very happy!

Ciao for now !

A selfie of us today :)

Begin....painting :)

 work in progress.

There is something romantic about the first day of the year and the resolutions that comes with it.
My goal for the first day of new year was to be done with this painting. Unfortunately I am not! :)
Hopefully by the weekend it will be.

It was sunny and lovely today and I started off with a beautiful run.
Then cleaning, cooking and painting ... my usual daily routine anyway I wish I cleaned less and painted more today :)

 Me and Mona this morning.

Hope you all had a beautiful begin of the year!