Doing The Batusi

What a tiring Day 1 of the Lucca Comics and Games Festival.  The weather was great; cool early in the morning but sunny and warmer by noon.  I spent most of my first 2 hours at the con getting sketches in my Lucca-only sketch book.  The first sketch of day was one I stumbled onto accidentally.  While checking out the tents where Panini Italia (mainly Marvel comics) and Planeta DeAgostini (mainly DC comics) were located, I found Max Frezzato’s booth.

I had only just discovered Max’s work on Wednesday during my visit to the exhibit that the show was throwing for the guests of honour.  I have totally fallen head over heels in love with art.  So of course I had to line up.  And wait about 75 minutes for my turn.  And what a wild and crazy 75 minutes it was.

To call what Max does as ‘sketching’ is a great injustice.  He is an artiste who used any and every means possible to create unique pieces of art in the  sketchbooks or comic albums of his fans.

He rarely used a pencil or marker to draw in any books.  He took out a jar of black paint and a container of red from his work bag.  Dipping his finger in away he went, just finger painting and palm painting and fingernail painting…whatever he felt he needed to do to give each person a truly unique piece. 

He must have received 5-6 calls while I was there and would always work while chatting on his phone.  Did a TV interview too.

This sketch was my absolute favourite.  Not for the sketch itself but for how it was done.  Max opened the softcover book, pulled one side of the cover taut and gently yanked the book from the binding glue.  Turning to the other side, he repeated the procedure and the grabbed the guts of the book.  I was in shock when he first separated the book.  I was horrified when I saw the book torn apart.  But my Italian friend, Gregory (I met him last year in Lucca while waiting in line for Eduardo Risso), just smiled and laughed.  And shortly afterwards, so did I.  Though I was still al little worried about what would happen to my book 🙂 

I tweeted the completed sketch earlier in the day:  Max’s Interior Cover Sketch 

He also used some weird sort gold crayon/charcoal type instrument which you can barely see in these pics that I took of him working on my sketchbook.  (I think I had the first sketch of the day that wasn’t fully done in paint.)

When the crayon/charcoal concoction was covered by the paint on his hands, he rubbed it in and the resultant use created new colours and textures.