Arte Fiera in Bologna

So the new gallery I'm working with in Marseilles, Galerie Dukan&Hourdequin, is participating in Art Fiera in Bologna from Jan.24th - Jan.28th... Here is a link to more info about the fair...

I did four drawings for them to take, I'm starting to rework and play around with some of my old references, a couple of these characters were initially large mylar paintings...Click on the images, they are a lot clearer big...






These are the last bird/butterfly grid drawings!

rewind pt4

Ok, so this will be the last recap, except for the next recap, which will just be what I have been doing since I got back to Canada. These recaps are wearing me out, cause I'm doing stuff and drawing things that I want to post now...

OK, so during Christmas we went to Rome and then Paris. A couple of days before leaving I came down with the flu, so we didn't get to see much of Rome... Our hotel was 2 bus rides away from the end of the subway line and I didn't have much energy, so I did lots of this:

And shitloads of this:

Here's Carolyn feeling sorry for me:


I was feeling a little better by the last day so we went down to the Ruins for some sightseeing.

I'm on a really weird computer right now, it looks like a dismembered laptop nailed to a wall and it's piggybacking on someone else's network, so its uploading images really strangely.... That last pic is so screwed up, but it also looks kinda neat that way...

I was super excited to see the Colosseum, I watched Gladiator twice in a row before we left Florence to get pumped up for it. I practiced some wrestling moves, I wanted to buy a stuffed lion and slay it to expose my supreme killer instincts to the other tourists. By the time we got there my stomach felt like hell, but I was so excited to be there that I tried my best to ignore it. Here's the face that I would give to my opponent if I were a real Gladiator:

It would fill him with feelings of fear and inferiority to the point where he would know to the deepest depths of his soul that his ultimate doom was upon him. But the Gladiator Face was too much for my sickly body; tensing my muscles that way must have pulled something in my bowels because 5 seconds after this photo was taken, I knew to the deepest depths of my soul that I was about to shit my pants. The washroom was a total mess, feces piled everywhere so I sprinted out of the stadium... Into the washroom of a fancy restaurant, and the day was won.

And thus ended my first legendary appearance in the great Colosseum.

We took an over night train to Paris, and stayed there for a week. I really don't know what to say about this stuff, we had a hotel, we took walks, we drank some alcohol... it was fun! Our pics are very much "couple photos"... just photos of us so we could have them when I went back to Canada, so I won't subject you to too many of them... This one makes it very obvious that Carolyn is way more attractive than I am...

And this is me in line to get into the Louvre.

The lineup was crazy there... If you ever go there, don't wait in line to by a ticket, go to an HMV store and buy one there and you can go through a separate entrance to get in... The lineup is way shorter there but way more intense, like the most multi-cultural mosh pit of all time... I was a little disappointed with the Louvre, I didn't see a single albino Opus Dei member... I broke my glasses during my going away party before leaving Canada, so museums were tough, I could barely get a grasp of what was going on.

Ok, thats it, now lets get on with the art already...

rewind pt3

The day after the fair I got a ride to the airport and flew to Florence Italy. I had just spent almost all of the last 5 years drawing, usually between 14 to 18 hours a day, so it felt great to get rid of my apartment and studio and leave. I packed some clothes, a few books, and enough art supplies to last a couple of months.

I didn't really take too many photos of Florence, my camera was acting funny, but we bought a disposable camera at some point, so I scanned some of those.... They look a little weird, I guess my scanner needs to be calibrated... Here's Carolyn, I think this is just down the street from our place...


You can see the mopeds on the left hand side, they are everywhere in the city. In Toronto I always thought mopeds were goofy looking, some dude speeds past you on one and you just want to clothesline him or something, but in Florence mopeds look all tough and badass somehow, I can't really explain it. Guys wear really feminine jeans there though, with eagles stictched into the butt and weird bleach stains and shit, I never really got use to that, its like a city of boyband members... I was talking to Carolyn a few days ago and she said that she got hit by a moped, it was bound to happen sometime, they tend to drive pretty crazy there. Luckily she's mostly OK.

Heres our place, it was huge, we shared it with two great guys from Carolyn's school, they were really welcoming to me... Carolyn took these photos when she first moved in there, a few months before I arrived, so its pretty empty looking...



Right across the street was the Specola, the oldest taxidermy museum in Europe, or maybe it is the largest, I can't remember. It was founded in 1785, most of the specimens are about 100 years old. Basically the place is a giant zombie-animal warehouse. The gums are rotted away and the eyelids are gross. In some cases wounds were not sewn up properly or fingers rotted away, so there are exposed bones. The place rocked my world, I got an open pass and drew in there almost everyday. Here's some photos from the museum:

And heres some scans of the sketches I made. I did lots of birds, I'm really getting into drawing them, I mightuse some of these for an upcoming Road of Knives page:

Carolyn set me up with a makeshift studio in the dining room. I played around with some acrylic and watercolour on paper and a couple of larger mylar pieces. Once I get that work scanned I'll post it on here...

Hmmmmm...thats all I have to write about Florence. It was a great trip with lots of fun stories, but I won't type them out here, its not the same without photos anyway. Two months of relaxing, drawing, and thinking. Oh, we took a trip to Rome and Paris during Christmas, I'll post some pictures in the next (and hopefully last) recap...