I love, once the work is finished, to look over the previous steps. It helps me find which passage went wrong or accidentally exceeded my expectations.

This is a work done in 2011 for an unfinished project with the illustrator Coca Frigerio. She is an artist whose workshop I used to attend when I lived in Genoa. She had been a student of Bruno Munari in Milan and had developed a very unique style, born from many collaborations with other important Italian art and design personalities.

I learned many things by watching her work. Among the rest, she thought me this mixed technique based on a periodical “scan and reprise” of the ongoing work, mixing photos, drawings and collage.

We would first decide the concept and sketch it by pencil. Then I digitally assembled images that would be useful to our work, without minding the details too much. I printed the photomontage and with a large marker I underlined space and composition. The third step was to manipulate the photomontage in a more detailed way, giving coherence to the different images through a definite line-art style. Finally, we finished by adding the man and the rest of the setting. To make the sea, we used parts of another sheet where we had created a pattern using ink and water. For the land, we tore and drew over magazine paper. The character as well is cut out from another sheet. This technique allows to divide the work in phases, giving the process more flexibility and also serving as a backup. It manages to save up time and avoid that unsettling feeling of incertitude caused by the white, empty sheet. And the resulting image has a very peculiar feel to it, which I’ve personally always liked.