papernoise blackbook

Notes:

Two sketches made in winter. Two completely different subjects. The first is titled Mr.Zombie explains inking, the second is a portrait of Sbrizz. One could say that it is a bit like beauty and the beast…

Tomorrow (Ryan Licata)

A fly rested on the lamp nearby. Frank sat smoking; a deaf tap sent ash from his cigar falling like snow. Nobody was around. When a man has thoughts of tomorrow to contend with a fly has no place being there. Breathing cigar air, his hand relaxed, unfurled a fleshy palm. Minutes past; the fly edged across the lamp. Frank noticed the abundance of grey hairs entwined about his wrist watch; smoke fled from his nostrils. Seconds past; the fly flew its erratic way nearby, where, closed in tight by soft flesh, death came so slow it didn’t make sense.

Last Minute (Sbrizz)

Non c’era nulla in quel piccolo appartamento incastrato tra gli alti palazzi del centro. Nulla che potesse far pensare che una volta varcata la soglia per andare sul balcone, questo potesse nascondere un meraviglioso giardino. Immenso, irreale più di un sogno. Ma il salice era lì, sotto le sue fronde un tavolino bianco e due sedie di vimini. Il macha era già pronto, l’aroma si diffondeva dolcemente. Un sorso, poi un’altro. Era tutto quello che voleva in quel momento. Chiuse gli occhi e sorrise pensando che non avrebbe mai più dubitato delle offerte lastminute.

Notes:

I did the illustration for the first story (Tomorrow) directly on my sketchbook. For some reason, in my head, this story had a strong noire atmosphere and some kind of 50s touch. Don’t ask me why… maybe because of the cigar? In the illustration I tried to expand the concept of “thoughts of tomorrow” adding the memories of yesterday. Something I think is strictly connected together.

In the second illustration I tried to get back to my “Dog Show technique” to recreate the dreamy, surreal atmosphere of the story. It’s actually all made with pieces of photographs and some digital painting on it. Thanks to Night-Fate-Stock (deviantart) for the willow tree stock.

This blog is striking today (together with thousands of others) as a protest to a recent law that tries to strongly limit freedom of speech on the Italian web.

dirittoallarete.ning.com
www.repubblica.it

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italiano.

A portrait I made for Sbrizz. Could as well do more of these…

Anarcho-vampire. A character from the online comic Lux Aeterna, I’m working on from time to time. I really should get on with the new episode, shouldn’t I?

A random tentacle guy.

And now some more news on myself: I have twitter account now! Follow me! twitter.com/papernoise

A self portrait I made for my profile on deviantart. The being on my back is called Octoskull and it’s my new pet.

Here we go again with more stories, this time I have two guest writers I want to introduce: Cubber and Ryan Licata, both incredibly talented and prolific! unfortunately Ryan has no blog for his writing… but I think he really should have one, what do you think?

#003 (by Ryan Anthony Licata)

The bird seller always wore a white suit with white shoes. The cages too, he’d painted white. To the boys that caught the birds he didn’t pay much; only enough to keep them out of school. He sold doves, pigeons, canaries and love birds. But there was one bird he’d never sell. It was not a rare bird but he watched over it like a hawk. He fed it the best seed, changed its water often and kept it in the shade. Nevertheless every night the dream reoccurred: the small bird pecking out his eyes, blood on his white suit.

#004 (by Cubber)

“Adesso Brušek stava togliendo da una scatola metallica alcune creature simili a granchi (Forse, prima che Brušek le catturasse, erano state davvero dei granchi).

Avevano una sola chela, priva di corazza; una protesi, credo; le altre zampe erano più corte del normale (ma “normale” qui non significa nulla), coperte da una ragnatela sottilissima, secreta dall’esoscheletro. Non occorreva catturarli: si arrampicavano da soli, dentro un mestolo da minestra. Quando il mestolo toccava l’interno della scatola, i granchi vi scivolavano dentro docilmente, con movimenti da orango.

Dopo toccava a me. Brušek aveva già preparato i ferri, in ordine davanti alla mia gabbia.”

So here’s the first stuff for Lazy Saturday Sketches. Of course these sketches were not all made on Saturday, and I wasn’t always lazy when drawing them.

A friend of mine, Valerie, has recently pointed out that I never gave any English translation for the text in Sed Tantum Dic Verbo (like the one in the picture above), and being it quite fundamental for the comprehention of the story, this could be a problem for all of you, who don’t read Italian.

So here is a short synopsis of Cubber‘s text, the comic is based on. I decided not to provide a real translation, because the text is quite complex and I’m not such a good translator.

Synopsis

Cubber’s story is written as a kind of police report, by an imaginary office for “christmas decoration prevention”. It tells about some people who put a figure of a Sphinx into a nativity scene. The spynx then tries to reach the infant Jesus to tell him something (but we’ll never know what). They try to stop the Sphinx by putting the shepherds in its way, but the sphinx would just bite them and eat all their sheep. Then the fisherman tries to catch the mythological animal while asleep (because it’s eaten too much), but the sphinx escapes. As a final resort, they give Saint Mary a holy cleaver while Joseph puts straw and mud into the ears of the infant to protect him against the words of the sphinx.

notes

The text is written so that the distinction between the real world and the miniature world of the nativity scene becomes quite blurred, what I have done in my comic version of it, is to tell the story from a different temporal point of view, i.e. tell the story from the traces the events have left in the world.