Templari for my sketchbook project

These are from a while back and are part of a sketchbook I'm hoping to complete within the end of the year. I feel very lucky being working on some great film projects these days, but at the same time I'm always dreaming of completing my own personal project too. Fingers crossed!

This makes my day!! Thanks to the guys at Cartoon Brew!!

I got picked as artist of the day by Cartoon Brew, my favorite blog about animation. It was a fantastic surprise and I feel very honored!! THANK YOU!

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-of-the-day/artist-of-the-day-francesca-natale-82277.html

Ispirazione: Lorenzo Mattotti e il colore

Inspiring Ian McCaig interview

I often listen at  music or  podcasts when I'm drawing or painting. Today  I started with this  interview which  made me appreciate even more the art of Ian McCaig. Of course I knew well his great  drawings, but I didn't knew how much of  a truly inspirational person and sincere visual storyteller he is. Check it out!

owl doodles

I played around with some owl sketches today

sgancia i dindi gringo

some healthy spaghetti cowboy fun!

from pirates to mafia guys

sketching from scribbles even today! I'm trying to use these scribbles as daily warm ups. I'm shooting to have 3 good ones a week...let's see how it goes !

laallalalaaaaalllaaaaaarghaaallala..!

another sketch from a scribble for Cup o' doodle
I told to myself not to draw pirates for a while but this one just sneaked in

cowboys and silly chaps

I just learned what chaps are:)

Pin-ups

I have many projects in the works and I use Instagram/Twitter to send the WIPs out to friends to get their reactions and feedback. I figured I posted the pics here too. I like the format and it will be nice to see the differences between these versions and the final ones:)

The beautiful "Le vagabond de StMarcel", short film

A few days ago a friend suggested me to take a look at this short film and I LOVED it. Some great talent here. Enjoy!

fox business 2

crows doodles afternoon

studies for a painting

Incredible cinematography: Christopher Doyle

I've been studying his films for a while. Just love his take on cinematography

                                          

tentacles and pirates

aaand...no more pirates for a while;)

more character studies and a painting

more faces fun

here are a few of the faces I've been working on recently
More to come:)

splashing colors on the pirate

lake monster concept

I did some lake monsters designs for a one panel gag.
The exploration was fun. Here is one of them .... ARRRGHALABBBLAAARRRR!!!

something sinister in the sinister forest

a painting and a sketch based on a scribble ( lately I'm really liking this way of sketching!)

Overqualified

having fun with story sketches

Old West Fellas

more sketches from random scribbles

more pirates on a very yellow bg

I've drawn maany pirates recently and most of them are still in my sketchbook. Will post more as soon as I can paint a few of them.

doodles of some sort of 3 mutated jellyfishes

Cup O' Doodle sketches

I just started contributing to a very cool artists blog called Cup O'Doodle http://cupodoodle.blogspot.ca/
They post scribbles once in a while and have the artists making characters or illustrations out of them.
It's such a good way to get out of personal drawing habits and design from  abstract images. It is also great to see what everyone else sees in the same scribble.
Here are my first two entries

Studying Ronald Searle's style and designing some dragons

Recently I've been studying  Ronald Searle's style and it was lots of fun observing all his graphic choices and trying to get close to his way of drawing . It has been so inspiring to observe how he transformed and evolved in different directions through the years. One of the things I love of his artistic personality is that he worked till the very end of his life with lots of energy.
Below are a couple of my attempts to resemble his graphic sensibility:).

I also just discovered that Uli Meyer Animation studio is making an animated version of Ronald's Trinians. It looks fantastic! ( Uli's knowledge and appreciation of Ronald's work is quite something) .

This is their production blog if you are interested in knowing more about this beautiful project:
http://animated-st-trinians.blogspot.ca/

fun character exploration

this is one of the character studies I've done for a illustration I'm working on.
Still exploring the style of rendering I will use for the final image

Inspiring Genndy Tartakovsky interview

one of my fav directors. Looking forward to watch Hotel Transylvania and hoping there will be a Samurai Jack feature film soon!

pirates and nastyness

Never drawn "traditional" pirates before these past weeks. Today I did some more because they are fun! No wonder why everybody loves them, there is so much room for exploration. Here are some nasty ones from my sketchbook:) I just polished them a little