Festival dell´Oriente, la Spezia

illustration, sketch

festivaldelloriente_1colour

I have spent the last week in Italy. I spent a lot of time sketching, basically because my guitar had to stay at home. I will post some of the more conventional motifs later(picturesque hillside towns, bustling Italian street life and so on). These are sketchbook drawings from the Festival dell´Oriente. We went there because a friend of mine is keen on finding exotic music, I had to somehow spend the time so I started drawing people. The whole thing is a mixture between a bazaar where you can buy everything from incense sticks, Nepalese art to Apulian cheese, lots of martial arts and exotic performances, like belly dancing. The whole thing has slightly trashy but entertaining vibe. There are a lot of gems to befound, but the more esoteric part is just not my cup of tea. I drew the dancers waiting for their appearance, basically because they kept comparatively still (I had tried to draw some of the kick boxing fights before, but they proved too fast for me). I concentrated mainly on one dancer, who stood out, basically because she seemed to utterly enjoy herself, from time to time performing small bits. I have only seen small parts of their performance, because I had to leave but they were really good. It seems like they were the Halfa dancers or Shakti Dancers from Rome, but I am not completely. sure. There is a stray squirrel, which is a character design for an upcoming book of mine, that was on the page before. Italy is great. I only wish I could speak Italian… More to come.