A lot of artists have a habit of travelling and using their memories and changing environment to inspire them to create new works. Travelling has an effect on any individual, whether they’re a watercolour painter or a retired accountant. Seeing new locations and learning more of a culture whilst immersed in it can change your world perspective, and an artist’s work is sometimes based around the same concept – helping someone see something from a different angle. But what are the benefits, beside inspiration? Well, for one, it may allow you to find the ideal location for your skills, from improving them to finding tools that will allow you to make the most of them. Gadgets in Tokyo could be great for anyone from a webcomic artist to a web developer who is seeking new tech to work with for a design on partypoker. Meanwhile, hunting for cave paintings could lead you all around the world, and finding them might influence your art style or lead you to create new works for a themed gallery event. This might sound expensive, but it’s worth the investment, and you can always supplement your travels by selling the art you’re creating while you travel, as people may enjoy seeing art created by a non-local. You’ll also make many connections with people in the art communities, which is important for when you’re looking to get enough publicity for your work and need the right people in the right areas to help make that happen. Lastly, you need to travel because it’s part of life! To stay in one place the entire time your alive seems like such a waste of your legs, of the world around you, and even if you don’t find anything that inspires you, you’ll come away with some incredible memories and a wider personal knowledge of the world, and that can never be a bad thing.

I recently paid a visit to Istanbul. It was my first time and I must say that Iistanbul is absolutely worth even a three day excursion! Not to mention (obviously) the city overwhelming architectural and artistic inheritage, you will be hit by contemporary Istanbul’s astonishing diversity, its hybrid character, the variety of its multiracial and ethnic traditions, its booming economy and its actual “speed of life”. I know that -considering whatever place you wish- there is always a  strong discrepancy between the reality and the perception of reality. Nevertheless, as every updated tourist, who has having a great time, I too shot a short video about three Istanbul famous locations, relatively  to the various feelings the city communicated me. So, no illustrations this time! Yet my video clip has a peculiar graphic carachter in order to quote those romantic artists and travellers who, during late eighteen and early nineteen centuries, enjoyed themselves in drawing, etching and  watercolouring.

My parents, a couple of true sea lovers never owned their own boat, yet they often arranged our family holidays on board their best friends motor-cruiser. Well knowing that such kind of  holidays would make priceless memories for me and my sister, they managed to get everyting right, in order to avoid any possible annoyance: the chosen destinations were always reasonably close and the motor-cruiser capability let 4 adults with their 4 children, to cohabit without particular problems during the navigation.  As 7 or 8 years old kids we used to play below deck during the passage,  were trained to sleep two by two in the berths, or allowed to steer for a while. Great fun!  Would be my parents tricks useful to some travel advisor at hand, in order to arrange super special holidays for parents and childs?  I don’t know: yet it was exactly during a recent night-cruise, that these memories could’nt wait anymore: the boat pushed by a gentle and stable breeze under the light of a benevolent moon, having nothing do but gazing at the whispering sea, I experienced that peculiar meditative attitude that every sailor, under similar circumstances, had surely learned. “Why “-I wondered- “I am so invariably at ease while on board whatever boat or ship?”  ”Where does my sense of  well being when resting in a narrow berth during a rough navigation, comes from?” Off course, you see, the very obvious answer is deep in my childhood.

Kaş, once an unspoiled fishing village, is now a relatively unspoiled tourist town on the southern bulge of Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. The area around Kas belongs to the Top 100 diving destinations worldwide. This is because this area have an high amount of underwater life, combined with very clear water (up to 40 meters visibility) and beautiful underwater landscapes. Actually there are around 30 different dive spots and many great places for swimming and snorkelling:  a destination really worth a Turkey holidays, in my opinion. Always, while I’m afloat on the sea surface, I know that a more or less intense underwater life is going on just under my feet: this fact simply makes me feel dizzy!  What then,  if you are bathing or -better- snorkelling a diving spot notoriously crowded by baracudas, stingrays, sea-turtles, rare snails, dorades, jack-fishes, soldier-fishes, octopusses, muray-eels, trumpet-fishes, brasses of many kinds, as well as huge groupers? What would be your feeling when so many amazing underwater lifeforms are to be seen regulary in unpolluted and crystal clear sea waters like Kaş’ ones? Would you realize at last, that a crowded, sunken and parallel world coexists with the one we are used to  ive in?

Illustration Friday topic is: mesmerizing

Most of us live their lives within a consolidated routine, whose boundaries completely depend by our will. In other words we are supposed to be sufficently self-possessed in order to get out our rate-race as soon as we are fed up with it: our mental well-being cannot but improve! With this respect we typically long for a trip, because a trip allows us to step beyond our mental and physical boundaries in one fell swoop. Among the other remedies late holidays give the persons the chance of making them feel good about themselves quickly, just because set them free to get away from everyday life in a few days. Personally I think that this “wake up and leave” attitude should arise from endless pretexts, each of them very personal. I mean, the fact of  being stuck in a boring life-routine should not be the only reason that drive us when we suddenly realize that we need a break. Sometimes is a song we listen to, or a film we watched to make us going for a precise holiday destination, perhaps a place we have been long time before or a place we have never been. My friend Gino has come from Thailand a month ago and kindly gave me  a new cotton sarong of the real and authentic kind used by north-east Thai farmers. You know one thing? I put the colourful brand label on my desktop and I am watching it  day after day, and I can’t escape the feeling of give up everything: there is just a Thai holiday in my mind!

Illustration Friday topic is: boundaries

I am quite an organized fellow when it comes to plan my trips. Since I’m going to be “on the road” usually for long, I always try  to arrange as many details as I can before leaving: booking in advance  is a must for me. Off course many people simply let their customary life-style go on:  late deal holydays is a perfect choice!  I know that a last minute rush to get organized can be fun and exhilarating and, I have to say, I experienced this special frenzy a few times when booking my flights as little as 24 hours before travelling! I suppose that my last last-minute flight happened a couple of years ago, while departing the  pictoresque Manda airfield (Kenya). Actually my first plan included a bus trip to Mombasa. I would left the island within a week so spending a few days more by the beach. Travelling by bus in Africa is a time consuming process, everybody knows, a bit demanding too but quite enjoyable to me. Yet some sudden news from home made my plans changed:  I had to hurry, in order to attend to my exhibition opening that had been anticipated. Fortunately enough the local air carrier had a vacancy on their Nairobi flight next day.  A lovely and imponderable last minute chance which made me feel suddenly happy and brazenly lucky!  The day after I found out that the plane was not exactly crowded: perhaps ten passengers all in all, and, among them a lovely red hair woman I had met a few days before…

Plenty of cheap flights to India in Bangkok! I had bought one, a night flight to Delhi. I had got my 6 months visa at the Indian Embassy in Sukhumvit. After travelling an year I was now coming back from the costly Japan. Yet it was to early to get back home and India was on my way home: a great, fascinating place to visit,  an affordable and exciting stop-over before to fly to Italy. The night flight found me mostly reading a beautifully illustrated, yet  misleading India guide book. When the plane landed my mind and my eyes were so full of visual stereotypes about sacred cows, sadhu, fakirs, holy men, Kumbha Mela, and then Taj Mahal and Hindu temples, snow capped peaks in Himalaya and the Ganga river, that I said to myself: “The author of this book is just exaggerating and his is a very trivial way to advertise such a wonderful land: there must be a deeper way than this!.” . But, alas! A few minutes later, at the passport control desk, the mature female officer checking my visa, smiled politely and pointed out that, during my six months stay in India, I would surely meet a fakir.  Her concise  talk caused my sudden, puzzled  immobility which she could not but  noticing:  to check that I had understood,  she gently turned her head and glanced to the closest wall where an old poster promoting tourism in India, was sticked: a poster that my eyes had obviously, unconsciously rejected…When I left India 4 months later, not even a fakir had been in sight.

For us Westerners, born and raised by the concept of “fixed price”, bargaining may seem a strange practice at first, or more benevolently, a waste of time. On the contrary Africans think that every bargaining is a challenge to immagination, a friendly way to “duel” with the customer, to value his ability and patience. Despite our different ideologies both of us look forward to get the best value: actually  a holiday deals is the golden rule of everybody who travels on the cheap. But even travellers who have no definite plan but not going home soon, need to bargain. So who cares if an hotel room deal or some souvenirs purchase turn into a time consuming process? The very thing is getting the right price, and even more important, being positively influenced by the local habits. How could I forget, for instance, the never ending deal I had in Mombasa with The Hydro Hotel indian owner some 30 years ago? How to forget his lethargic manner, purposely “provocative”, that included scores of apparently inconsistent questions and ended with a cup of chai sipped togheter, after he had appreciated my skills and before fixing the room final price: 18 kenyan shillings a day. A great price! So when I went back in Mombasa Old Town in 2009, I could not escape the feeling of paying a visit to the old and lousy Hydro Hotel which, I found out, was not changed at all. I climbed the stairs  and reached the same wooden desk at the reception, as in dream. The young clerk listened to my story, laughed a lot and said that the old baba retired just a few years ago…

Illustration Friday topic is: influence

A very good reason for a cyprus holidays is to visit the archeological greek sites, particularly the temple of Aphrodite and the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates.  Everybody who has been visiting some “special” archeological area, has experienced a very peculiar and powerful  feeling, something that really can project the visitor back in the past, making him almost able to be phisically in that very place many centuries ago, among the ancient inhabitants and their voices…I suppose that the temple of Apollo in Cyprus makes no exeption: about 2,5 kilometres west of the area of Kourion’s ancient city stands the temple of Apollo “Hylates”. In it -being one of the main religious centres of ancient Cyprus -pilgrims form all parts of the island arrived at the sanctuary of Apollo and entered in it through its two main gates…Can you figure this out?

Among the  thousand reasons that make an Italy holidays very peculiar, there is food. Italian food is higly reputed due to  its traditional quality and variety. Yet, as for the rest of western or westernising  countries, (I apologise for my bizarre neologism) a new  cooking trend has gained little by little more passionate fans, even in the conservative Italy: the fusion cuisine.  The most creative Italian chefs deals with fusion and try their best in order to create new appealing dishes, which invariably make use of ingredients from distant and different cooking stiles. Here is a good example! The Ristorante Clandestino chef is truly influenced by Japanese food and he is invariably able to produce some funny, inusual, always excellent, food combinations. To underline the concept, last but not least, the management of this cozy beach restaurant, called it SUSCI restaurant instead of SUSHI restaurant, but you won’t understand the pun unless you speak Italian!