recherche

walk in the woods

back from two months spent in australia seeing family, basking in the sun and wind, not wanting to leave.

back to my desk in rome, planning the next two books or maybe three, thankful for the cold weather to clear the mind a little.

I am not here often, but you can follow along on instagram.

sketchbook

playing with pencils, watercolours and straight inks. also practicing hiragana, just for fun.

sketchbook lately plus a little interview

have been quite busy lately, and happily so. i recently started two new picturebooks, and have been quite swamped with editorial work. sometimes i feel like my body is taking the shape of the chair, if it weren't for the little monkey's regular and pleasant interruptions.

on a personal note, i was recently interviewed by the lovely ladies over at museradio (an online podcast series about creatives and their work). here is the interview (hoping i won't bore the heck out of you with my life story)! photo below by Kat Tan.

redheads

crayons and pencils

finally had a little spare time to sketch in between projects. it's so important and i wish i could be one of those incredibly prolific people who fill in numerous sketchbooks every year. I have one sketchbook that lasts forever, and rarely gets finished. i like to think the experimenting happens on the job. but this is so much better, and so liberating.

sketchbook

taking a break from food drawing. well, sort of.

september

i haven't forgotten this space, but it's been hard to make time for it. over the summer i finished (almost) a book for walker books, and started another one for usborne, finished the hundreds of drawings for a documentary about the jewish ghetto of venice, went to the little beach town of peschici for a few days (which was subsequently flooded), watched my daughter start crawling everywhere (and become an aussie! hello passport photo), moved my studio to the living room,
spent time with dear friend emma from melbourne, bought some tickets to go back to australia for christmas.
these are very exciting times!

work recently

i've slowly started to get back to work. the time left is small still, but it's nice to get my hands dirty again with things that ain't nappies. working on sketches for a book, and below, some vignettes i did for travel and leisure magazine in mexico.

sketchbook

some little animals running wild. after a few weeks working on commissions, it feels necessary to doodle aimlessly on a sketchbook again. listening to silvia perez cruz, whom a friend introduced me to last week, so wonderful. here she is with her father on guitar.

greenery

extract from a project i worked on this summer. i need to get around to buying some houseplants. what's stopping me? could be the four flights of stairs, or my black thumb premonition. i do like a bit of green though.

sketchbook

thinking about hair, thinking about textures, thinking i need to spend more time free-drawing.

sketchbook

petits animaux!

little treasures

feels good to be home again, despite the physical shock (numb brain fuzzy throat sleepiness) of going from tropical to winter climates. it's been an incredible month, seeing my sister wed back home and  visiting those postcard-esque places in thailand on the way back, makes me feel incredibly lucky.

illustrated recipes for november and december coming this week, as well as some new things i've been working on.

meanwhile, a book, a song.

little character study

character studies are always an interesting thing to do. so is the figuring out what stylistic approach will do best.

meanwhile, a song.
happy weekend.

p'tit marin

love the pencil part. love beards.

la paresse du mois d'août

i've been neglecting the blog a little, reasons could be: a) have been highly distracted and lethargic. b) have been trying to help out gianluca with some papercut for an animation, and highly more probable: c) have been enjoying the summer, with its warm seas and copious amounts of fish dinners. going to assisi tomorrow, for a few days, so catch you next week.

here's a song for today, and some snaps from august.

ordinary people

something i'm working on, which will hopefully, at some point, see the light of day. it's going to be a busy month, and i may be a little absent from this space, but I can't wait to show you more of this little book project.

abecedario

im working on an alphabet project. yesterday i made some quick memory cards (there is some really bad ESL for kids material out there, picture wise, so i tend to make my own) for the kids i teach english to, who are learning B words, and i thought about making the whole thing as a side project.

the whole abc thing is a bit overdone in the illustration world but at the same time it's nice to see what kind of words different illustrators pick for each letter. what would you pick for A? and is there an alternative to xylophone for X?