Seals

For the past couple of months, my interest has been focusing in chinese seal carvings and calligraphy. A product of these experiments, is a symbol created for a good friend of mine, who recently started working with photography, and wanted some kind of signature for his pieces. The result, which you see first, is, as I like to say, a mixture of chinese and byzantine calligraphy. The rest, are just an exploration of this new world. I must say, I found pleasure in filling my pages with these enigmatic symbols.

You can see a part of John's work here.

Bouche Fermée

About two years ago, I designed a logo, or a symbol, as I like to call it, for a group of five talented musicians, named "Bouche Fermée". This was my first ever "serious" job, and my first contact with "clients", meaning the piece I was creating had to satisfy others too, besides myself alone. The result depicts a visual language I was working on at that time, and it is good to see that now. You can see the final piece first, and then the process of making it.

Also, you can watch the guys here. They are really good.

Nylon

Hardcore Papa

I like quick, tiny portraits. I hadn't made any of them for a while.

Landscapes and Atmospheres

I love the word atmosphere (greek: ατμόσφαιρα). These sketches were made as attempts to capture the atmosphere and feeling of different places and landscapes. I find this process extremely difficult and painfull but hugely important and very rewarding in the end, if it is conducted with both freedom and honesty. I have only made a few steps towards this direction but I want to explore further this theme, improving every aspect of it (observation, synthesis, design, illustration).

Patterns

It's been almost a year since the time I made these drawings. It was the time I started noticing and studying all the different, super complex patterns and shapes that live around us. From a small crack on the pavement to the tree-like struscture of our nervous system, "out there", or "in here", there are infinite resources for our visual library. So, now and then, I picture anything I find interesting or unusual and store it, so I can incorporate it into my work, when the time is right. Triin Veersalu has been a great influence and a guide for the drawings you see here.

p.s. For the past eight months, I've been without a computer, so working on the blog was almost impossible. Today, I finally decided to come back to it. I have tons of sketches I want to upload and I thought it would be nice to start with a few of my favourite pages.

Fog

These started as experiments with water colors and ink. I had no idea what I wanted to achieve. Maybe some forms inspired either by microcosmos or macrocosmos, meaning you can either see rivers and lands, or cells and bacteria. These two scales are very alike.

The key was I didn't, actually, want to draw anything, but I rather wanted to let things happen on their own will. For example, you let a blob of ink to fall on wet paper and you watch these unbelievably detailed, coral-like shapes, appear in front of your eyes. And this is really amazing, as I would never be able to imagine and create these forms with my own hand or mind. Human mind is really bad at creating things out of nothing. 

Eyes

My mother likes to draw eyes all the time. I remember sitting with her, doing my homework, and her hand wouldn't stop sketching these eyes with that blue bic pen. Most of the time she wouldn't be aware of it. It was spontaneous. Sometimes, I would even go mad with her obsession, when I wouldn't be able to solve that exercise, and my mother would sit there calm and apathetic, forgetting I was there. "Mum! Stop it and help me with this one!" But I really admired her drawings. They were beautiful.

So, here is my mother speaking through my hand. The power of genes is unbeatable.

Profiles

This is a series of quick sketches I made to experiment with the human face. I find the profile view a lot more interesting. In my eyes, it tells much more than a flat front view and is more three dimensional. Plus, it gives more freedom to play with different shapes, forms and contours, and all of that with just a few lines. I didn't spend more than ten minutes in each face, so they're quite spontaneous and cartoon-like. I had a lot of fun with these guys, as while and after I finished each one, I spent a few moments to think about their personality, their life, their job, their feelings, their soul. And then I showed them to people to have their stories too.

Time

It's been ages since my last upload and I feel bad about it. There are so many sketches I want to scan, but I just feel too lazy to do it. 

Anyway, this is the first drawing in my new sketchbook, so I decided to start with this one.