papernoise blackbook

My cover and artwork for the music EP It’s the End was just published on the illustration portal IllustrationServed, you can check it out here: www.illustrationserved.com/gallery/Its-the-End-EP-Artwork

Sheets by Ryan Licata

When the barn across from the farmhouse began to creak and the owls therein screech, she needn’t have looked to the ominous sky to know, it was coming. The air was electric, her light-cotton dress left her body, and the down on her arms swayed like the wheat in the fields. Abandoning her basket she ran out front, where they flew ghostly, preying on the wind. She snatched onto their tails just as the storm broke, snapping them free from the wooden pegs. They lunged in rage, until, under the eye of the storm, she smothered them against her breast.

Il giuramento di Ippocrate di Andrea Esposito

Concordiamo tutti sul fatto che la visita di un medico possa cambiare la vita di un uomo.
A Franco Delano faceva male una caviglia. A ogni passo si accompagnava un sinistro schiocco secco. Ossessionato da quel rumore, Delano si recò dal medico.
“Niente di preoccupante” disse il medico. “Il suono che crede di sentire è frutto della sua immaginazione. Lei, infatti, è privo di orecchie”. Scoprendo di essere privo di orecchie, Delano scoppiò a piangere. Eppure, dato che, ad ogni modo, la caviglia non aveva alcun problema, si sentì curiosamente sollevato nel ricevere quella notizia. Notizia che, comunque, non sentì.

Notes

With this post I am now officially halfway through with my hundred word stories project!

The Killer by Ryan Licata

The jury was out. The chronicle had its front page. Tommy’s parents turned off the television; they’d seen enough. His mother, knitting another sweater for the hard months to come, stared red eyed at the framed photograph at her bedside: little Tommy with his curly locks, stark blue eyes and strange pouting lips, sat, dressed in a sailor suit, sword raised, on a rocking-horse; while his father, the good minister, gently rocked him back and forth with his foot, reading aloud from the book of Revelations: the opening of the second seal, the horse of red, a slayer of men.

Notes

Sometimes there is these really gratifying moments, when you create an illustration and show it to the author of the story (Ryan in this case) and he says: “It’s just the picture I had in mind when I wrote it!”. The wonderful thing about artistic collaboration is that it either works… or it just doesn’t, and there’s little help from science in explaining either outcomes. The more I grow into this life, the more I am thankful for the little things I can’t explain, it brings back a bit of magic.

I had another terrible week. A week where I had no time ad all the wonderfully superfluous things like, among others, updating my blog. Maybe I have to accept the things as they are and renounce one and for all to the idea of posting here regularly… but whatever…

It’s no news that I don’t read a lot of comics anymore. I prefer to inspire myself with other media, like for example novels. I’ve stumbled over a couple of really interesting readings lalely, which I’d like to talk about here.

The first one is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a book that take the original novel by Jane Austen and turns it into something you’d actually want to read (as the book itself states). Apart from the illustrations, which are just plain lousy (why do they pay people like that to illustrate a book, while talented people have a hard time getting commissions?) and the fact that the book is no easy reading, it’s a great experiment and great fun to read most of the time. The author keeps the original plot and linguistic style, adddins a bit of zombies, gore and martial arts here and there. While this novel is not perfect (sometimes it can be tiresome to read, due to the old fashioned language, and the there’s some problems with the storyline here and there) I highly recomend it!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_Prejudice_and_Zombies

Another book I’d like to talk about it In Cuniculum by Lapin. Unfortunately this one’s only available in English, but since It contains several illustratins by me, (attention: subliminal advertising) I though I’d talk about it anyway. Lapin has a highly imaginative and surreal way of writing, the short stories that make up In Cuniculum are sometimes shocking, sometimes fascinating. One way or the other, Lapin knows how to surprise you and the book is a great read I hope he’ll get it translated in the future!

www.lacarmelinaedizioni.it

Spine di Lucy

Il bambino con le Spine nacque di sette mesi con un parto cesareo prima che le punte si conficcassero nelle viscere delle madre. A sei mesi pareva un cactus, a due anni un porcospino. Nessuno voleva giocare con lui. Crescendo le spine diventavano sempre più appuntite. Quando incontrò la ragazza Giunco si avvicinò a lei senza preoccuparsi di poterla trafiggere. Lei si insinuò tra le sue Spine senza pungersi. Innamorati rimasero incastrati l’una nell’altro per lungo tempo. Ma lei, stanca di adattare continuamente la sua forma all’andamento delle punte dell’amato, un giorno sparì lasciando solo un biglietto scritto col sangue.

Notes

This story reminded me a lot of the short stories by Tim Burton, so I was really tempted to draw something in that style. In the end I decided to do something just following the inspiration of the moment, without following predefined models (as far as that is possible). So this illustration is more about an idea, a moment, a sensation…

Lazy Saturday Sketches is back as well, and it’s also changing a bit. I might change it’s name into Lazy Saturday Monsters, because that’s what you will be seeing in the next weeks!

IL giorno dell oca by Scoiattolazzo

Libellule polacche strozzate dal gas.
Cigni ungheresi morti di inedia.
I forti tori dell est, decimati.

C’e’ puzza, ed un vento abominevole, mentre l oca dagli anfibi neri fa il verso all acquila.
E nell anfratto schifoso e osceno dove medita, anche il diavolo distoglie lo sguardo davanti all orrore.
Anni dopo a  Norimberga, 17 oche vengono giudicate, impiccate,  fatte a pezzi e bruciate nei loro stessi forni.
Vittime… carnefici….specchi distorti.
C’e’ gente che giura che tra una sentenza e l altra si e’ sentito piu’ di un quack, provenire da dei giudici dal becco giallo.

Note

The hundred word stories are back! There have been time when I thought that never again I would find the strength to draw a line. But probably I just needed to focus on something completely different (like synths and making some music) Giètz! has put my mind and body to great fatigue. Drawing a graphic novel is alway hard, but when the product of your efforts feels like something alien, it’s even worse. I still think that in the end I did a decent work, and that Giètz! is an interesting project, worth being made, and that I needed to be working on it. It’s been a great experience. Nonetheless, now more than ever, I know what path I want to be travelling on, so it’s great to see that my lust for drawing is coming back again!

(Senza titolo) by Cubber

O per esempio il tac tac del bastone di un cieco sul selciato. Tac
tac tac… non vedo il cieco perché è dietro di me, ma il tac tac
corre sul selciato, sale per un buco sotto le mie scarpe, tac tac tac,
come una febbre delle ossa, tac tac tac, un valzer di marionette; mi
sale lungo la nuca come per darmi la morte, tra i capelli come un filo
o un insetto urticante; mi ustiona mentre scende lungo la faccia, tac
tac tac, entra in bocca e apre nei denti una crepa che si fa sempre
più grande.

Notes

I never really worked on this story, though I had it laying around for some time, because I didn’t know how to draw it. The story is told from the inside out, it’s about things you feel, not things you see. So how to visualize this? In the end I decided to try to illustrate the events in the story how they might appear in the protagonist’s mind.

Sorry, still none of my regular posts. But in the meantime here’s a small preview of a comic I’ve been working on lately. It’s about the fathers of goth rock Bauhaus and it will be published in the upcoming anthology Guida illustrata al frastuono più atroce #2 by the Italian punk comic group Lamette. I really like the vintage film touch I managed to give to this panels. Basically it’s the “Dog Show technique” adapted to b/w. The text is a variation on the Bauhaus hit Bela Lugosi is Dead. That’s why it all looks like some old horror movie.