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The Black Hole by Hannes Pasqualini

In the beginnig it was just a medium sized black hole in the ground, some kind of well, they thought. Farmer Rossert and his younger son Eldebun had been looking at it for most of the afternoon trying to get a clue on its origins. At one point it started to become more two-dimensional, like a flat black disk sitting on the grass and spinning nervously on itself. Farmer Rossert picked up a small stone and threw it into the hole. He never should have done that.

notes

It’s been some time since I last posted one of my own stories, actually I only did it once inepisode #1. Well, today I wasn’t in the mood to work on anybody else’s stories, so you’ll get this one.

Nocciola by Alessandro Bonino

I coniugi Mario e Laura Piovano, di Serravalle Scrivia, in provincia di Alessandria, avevano cercato per molto tempo di avere un bambino senza, purtroppo, ottenere alcun risultato. Su consiglio del Dottor Alberto Miniati, primario della clinica San Michele Arcangelo di Cadelbosco di Sopra, provincia di Reggio Emilia, grande luminare che aveva seguito tutti i loro infruttuosi tentativi, decisero di intraprendere l’estenuante percorso dell’adozione. Dopo dieci lunghi mesi, ricevettero finalmente la comunicazione che un bambino era stato loro assegnato. Grande fu la loro sorpresa quando scoprirono che non si trattava affatto di un bambino, ma di una strega di nome Nocciola.

Notes

I’m finally back with some hundred word stories! I was really starting to miss them. The author of this first story of 2010, is yet another new entry in the project (I get quite some requests lately, and that’s great!). I’ve been drawing people in suites for so much time now (Gietz has something to do with is, in case you wondered), that it becomes quite automatic for me to draw a tie on a male character…

This is perfect timing: today is Thursday, and tomorrow is Christmas… so I couldn’t resist to the tentation of publishing a properly Christmas-themed story. I hope that this little tale, written especially for this occasion by Ryan Licata, may help you evade, if only for a second, from the claws of Christmas madness…
And of course… Merry Christmas to all of you people and thanks very much for having devoted a bit of your time to read this blog, in the past year.

Nobody Writes to the Fat Man by Ryan Licata

Albtraum stood outside the fat man’s room with a pair of darned socks and a hot water bottle. The elf nudged open the door and peeked inside. By candle light he saw his old friend over by the window, the four glass panes frosted over, sitting in nothing but his y-fronts. “Leave everything over on the bed, Albtraum.” He placed the things down with deliberate slowness, then, light of foot, stepped just outside the door to watch as Santa began to trace upon each of the frosted panes the names of all the children whom no longer sent him letters.

With all that Jazz and history in my mind I sometimes forget about the things that really keep going and doing art. Thanks god I have sketchbooks ( and have to scan them in for this blog) to remind me that my path goes in a completely different direction.

Actually there’s a lot I could say about this topic, but the time hasn’t come yet.

This shadow lady just keept haunting my mind for weeks until I decided to get rid of her by drawing her on this piece of paper.

The frequent reader of this blog might recognize that this is a sketch for one of the first illustrations I made for the A Hundred Words Stories project.

A retired general.

Sometimes the forgotten past comes into your life like an unexpected visitor and sometimes you re-discover parts of yourself through it…

A couple of weeks ago me and Elisabeth went with my mother up the mountains, to the village where she was born, to visit our relatives. At one point we took a walk through the woods and I discovered this really weird “pietà” sculpture (a Madonna holding a dying Christ, which you can’t really see in the picture above). What I like about it is, that the face is completely white and the eyes look more like empty holes giving it a pretty unsettling effect. The figure looks more like a ghost or a vampire, than the grieving mother we are used to see.

According to my mother this sculpture was made by a granduncle of mine called Joseph Ploner, better known in the village as “Weber Våter”, who got into wood sculpture when he was 80. Somehow it makes me think that a certain interest for the macabre and the unsettling  might have its root in the family… at least on a latent, unconscious level. Now that I think of it, many of the old iron crosses in the village’s cemetery where made by my grandfather (should take pictures of those too, there were just too many people in the cemetery last time).

The unexpected visitor might have opened a door I had forgotten.

I’m sorry as usual for not posting them yesterday as I should have. But you’re good hearted readers, aren’t you?

Heat Rise by Carl Mills

The heat rose through the floorboards and stained the walls with humidity.
Her eyes were like the bluest sky, clear and cool. Then that smile spread across her pure pale skin like a feverish flood and I was under her spell.
All my good intentions slid silently from my mind and all I could do was stare. Like a rabbit in a headlight.
The sun shone through the dirty window, lighting up her mass of crimson curls like a forest fire.  I wanted to run deep into the night. Far from her poisoned magic. But I was frozen with desire.  She reached out, took my trembling hand and whispered softly in my ear as her madness drowned my memory.

Senza titolo by Lapin

Sono marionette particolari: i fili vanno legati sia alle mani che ai piedi del marionettista.
Quando balla, le marionette si divincolano come inquisiti sotto tortura.
Ad ogni capriola, aggiunge un’altra marionetta. Manovrandole con maestria inaudita, riesce a fare in modo che siano le marionette stesse ad attaccargli addosso nuove marionette. Il movimento con cui una marionetta cattura un’altra marionetta ricorda quello di una catapulta.
Alla fine, è talmente ricoperto da marionette che non lo si vede più. Rimane solo un groviglio di pupazzi che torcono le braccia di legno in direzione degli spettatori, ammiccando con cento feroci occhi di vetro.

Notes

The illustration for Heat Rise is certainly a bit strange when compared to my usual way of doing illustration. It’s something that might not even look like I’ve made it. But somehow that’s what projects like A Hundred Word Stories are there for. While I try to focus as much as possible on one consistent style in my commissioned work, I still need to experiment and try different approaches.
The puppets of the second story on the other hand resemble more some older works of mine. Here I had some great fun, my mind visually expanding the complex and vivid imagery of the story.