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Zeno Pillan

A3 paper

Handpaint A3 paper. (297x420mm)

On sale.

17€ each (delivery ITA included, for other locations extra delivery cost may apply)

On the rocky Plage du Bau Rouge, trying to find a more comfortable position, I looked up at the sky, outlined by the cliff I used to shelter from the sun. It was charming, but didn’t solve the pain of my back on the solid rock muffled just by a short towel.
It’s Ceci, in the signature picture she set as my telephone screensaver a time she was pissed with me, and a frame from a video where she is smiling after shaking both her middle fingers. I just sketched it in the office, on an envelope we received – probably a fine issued by some employees – during the breaks of last week before summer vacation. “ok, we really need a vacation if this is the mood here” Marta said when she saw the sketch lying on my desk at the end of July.
Same place, and day of “fa schiuma ma non é sapone”, a naturist moves his beach umbrella (with basement) from one spot to another.
We were chilling in the rocky Plage du Bau Rouge. The evening water was getting a bit nervous, with aggressive waves. They were foamy-splashing against the rocky shore. Those splash were truly entertaining. I closed the book I was reading – “Strange Buildings” by Uketsu – and admired them for a while. I felt the hurge to draw one of those waves. I have to admit, seeing it live it’s a more intense experience, and I also understood why so many chose it as a subject: “A bigger Splash” by David Hockney, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by Hokusai, and The Toei Company ocean logo. For this artwork I used for the first time two new tools for watercolor I bought at Marseille: Masking fluid and a Bigger brush.
I saw the odyssey. I saw the cyclops. I wanted to draw one. I remembered I already have have my “cyclop”. I think I was almost thirteen, and it was the spring of 2001 when a guy in my class showed me proud his ink copy of the eye with skull by Escher. I think it was a few days (or maybe hours or even minutes) later than I drow for the fist time en eye in a mouth.
In August 2023, I was in Sicily. There, we got on a boat for a one day trip around Favignana Island. While most people rushed for the spots under the sun, Ceci and I searched and found two spots in the shade. We found a table with some chairs in the back of the boat, with no direct sunlight. To me, the best available spot: perfect for me to draw and for Ceci to read. For lunch we ate a wonderful pasta and, diving underwater with a mask, holding my breath, I saw how people looked faceless when swimming with their heads out of water.
The entrance to my workplace is in a square where there is also an university. In July there were degrees, and one of the students cough my attention. No laurel wreath on the head, but a double bow on the back. A big white bow from her halter neck top, and a light skin bikini bow on her naked sunburnt back.
Before your start to tear its petals, the flower already have its answer.
I saw three girls, wearing those solid colors bikini. No prints, no texture, just plain colors. For some reason I needed to draw them.
We were in Lisbon for Jack’s Bachelor surprise trip. He was clueless and didn’t suspected at all we were planning this trip. His fiancee helped the groomsmen organize and – since two of them works in the same office – they even involved his boss; she blocked his planner with fake meetings to avoid someone else or the groom himself scheduling something on the Friday we were leaving. He was really stressed about those meetings. He wore his best suit and even brought a tie in the backpack. He understood everything only when his best man stopped him on the way out of the garage, wearing her shorts and holding a sign. I should have joined them in the evening, but my flight was delayed to the day after, so I landed just in time to get to the Surf lesson we booked for Saturday morning. It was the first time for almost everyone of us. To begin the warm-up, the teacher asked us to form a circle, take our neighbour by hand, rise left leg up and push our weight backwards. The teacher – you can recognize him on the drawing by the yellow t-shirt he’s wearing over the swimsuit – granted me a nickname for the following days: “muchacho mustacho”.
I’ve always seen daisies as flower in the grass, with small and low stems. This year they surprised me as bigger plants with leaves and lots of flowers. Is the same kind of plant let grew up? This artwork ended a bit abruptly because I read Ceci texting me she was feeling bad.
I don’t know exactly what it is, looking online it can be probably caraway, but I’m not sure at all. Halfway, I lent this paper on the grass looking for some other color. Some buds casted their shadow on the paper, so I added them.
I found this old drawing I made as texts for a reel. It cointained a typo and I corrected in red. Now it’s a combination of multiple kind of nightmares.
In out Venice Art tour we saw severals wonderful art shows. We also went in this apartment where the guide told us: “You can take pictures of everything, except the Rothko”. The “broken legs” sculture in front of it was actually my favorite spot of the place. I didn’t brought with me much paper, so I ended up drawing on the guide from another art show we saw the day after.
She created a group for those live session drawings: Artforsharing. Is for sharing because, at the end, everyone should show their works, to share ideas with the others. I admit I was a bit distracted by Milo. He was looking for attention and if I stopped playing with him for a second he would jump on the drawings, messing them with his tiny feet and nails.
“Ok, I’m a bit tired” she said preparing the set for a pose she could rest a bit while we draw. I felt the need to draw also her phone. It was there, and I felt it was a very important detail. Now that I think about it, I didn’t draw her tattoos, but I draw the phone. What I feel I can ignore and what I don’t probably tells a lot about me.
“Ok, wait, I have this pose in my mind I really want to do!” Adel said. Than she took the Lampshade (she removed from the lamp before starting to have more light) and put her head into it. “Oh, this lampshade is crowded by spiders” she discovered, “but it’s ok”. My favourite detail about the pose was the mouth peek-a-booing under the shade. Too bad I had to draw it a bit recalling it, because it disappeared under the lamp the exact moment the chin’s paint was dry and I could draw on it.
We were in Spazio Pontano 35. It’s a nice place, in a inner court. They also do concerts here. The building is one of those country farm buildings, that still remains in Milan. Every time is shocking to discover that outside of them there is a city a no countryside or fields at all.
Adel is a performance and video artist. She told us that the week before, she made a performance where she was tied up, waiting for someone to empathise with her and set her free. She was surprised because she had to wait several hours. Way more than she expected.
Those were all short poses: the first two lasted 5 minutes, all the other ones 15 minutes each. Later, I added the background to this one because I wanted to fix some proportions and define a foot.
The 18th of July I went to the “Spazio Pontano” for a live drawing evening. If I remember correctly, we were eleven: nine people drawing, Adel organizing and posing, and her dog Milo. I added Milo later in this drawing. I just sketched where he was with a stroke of paint, but he was changing pose too much to actually draw him real-time.
Top part of the two paper “XVI – The wall”. Some years ago I started drawing a tarots decks, witch I’ve not finished yet. One of my favorite card I drawn for it was my version of the 16th arcane: the tower. The tower is inspired by the myth of the fall of Babel’s tower, so the protagonist is the thunder that destroys the tower. It is a card of failing and ruin. I don’t like that much, this is why I changed the tower to the wall. It’s inspired by the fall of Berlin’s wall, and the thunder is replaced by people. So, it became a good card to me, where unity and friendship wins over conflicts. Where life wins over nonsense.
Bottom part of the two paper “XVI – The wall”. Upside down Major Arcana usually changes their meaning so, in the lower part is the negative version of this reinterpreted arcana: the death loop generated by building walls. I read online that ants may form a death track where all of them walk round till death. This happen because ants use chemicals tracking to find their way back to the anthill. If some ants starts a looping path, and more ants joins, making the loop stronger, while the route back home fades, they build a death track, they will follow till death, thinking is the way back home. And any other ant, meting the track will join it, tricked by its chemical strength.
When I was young, on the TV I saw a clip of a candid camera where people cold take all the watermelons they could bring away without any tool but using only their body for a fixed price. The fun part was they selected people overdoing: bringing a stack watermelon on their bodies, keeping them in balance with every part of the body, stretching their neck and walking slowly with an huge and unstable amounts of watermelons. This is exactly how I feel those days with things to do and tasks: overwhelmed, unsteady and fearing of letting fall some of them on the ground with a loud and messy crush.
I swear, I’m not looking.
Sometimes things just click. After I edited “Norvegian Bouquet” and I was extremely satisfied of the result, I made a selection of Artworks I wanted to edit to make them better. I had “don’t be a downline” in this selection and tried some edit on the iPad witch were not satisfying. I also wanted to draw a vine of tomatoes and I associated the two drawings only because it was a similar structure. It was only after I painted the tomat on I figured out it was the perfect contrast between an healthy and a parasitic tree structure. I was not 100% convinced, so, tomatoes won overall. Overnight I was still dubious, and I realized I wanted (and I could) make the background visible again.
Edit of “Clover’s flower” from 2024. Looking back at it I felt it needed a more powerful background. So, as I did on “Norwegian bouquet”, I added a massive gauche background without altering the flower.
Edit of “Ghost train” I painted in 2022. I added more gauche, pencils and neocolors to the 2022 artwork. Soon I felt it missed something. It’s so strange to me that I needed years to figure out the most important part it was missing was some perfectly normal visible human skin.
(Notes from the 8th of May 2021) Harpon Harpy Harpiā You know if there is any word for a male harpy? If there is I haven’t found it. So even if there’s one is so little used that isn’t a real word. (The 10th of May 2026) Harpon attack Yesterday I’ve been to DDD Digital Design Days. A speaker, a designer from Apple, remarked the importance of the project and meaning, over the realization. I started thinking and sketching this male harpy (I’m calling harpon) attacking a girl. Every detail, is a symbol; the wings as a social advantage, the halo as a political and legal legitimacy. Why the symbolism? I think there is a misunderstanding between non-artis and artis on meaning of things. Sometimes people don’t believe small details in art have a meaning but, starting from a blank canvas, everything I add is a choice, a decision. It’s most likely I thought about it that I didn’t, because even not thinking and adding something random is a decision that has a meaning. You can’t control what you are inspiring people, for a minute I stopped thinking: “What would the DDD speaker think if he knew he inspired me drowning this harpon attacking a girl with his hard cock and halo on the head?”
I opened my old sketchbook, searching for something I wanted to draw big but never did. I found the sketch of seagulls in Sweden, with dry weeds as a line of “X” on the sand. I already did a more realistic version (on a smaller size). This time I wanted a bit more abstract.
Du äter en jordgubbe.
In Florence I saw an exhibit of Rothko’s paintings. They said Pompeis’ murals inspired him. To be honest, I liked Rothko’s art more when I saw it in a modern villa integrated with nature, instead of a palace in a renaissance town. Anyway, this is a subject Rothko in Florence inspired me.
This weekend I’ve been in Florence. I noticed those blue geometric posters on the walls from a local street artist.
On the internet I found a picture of a painted mouth, with a wide flat smile I liked a lot. It was on a yellow background with a pink frame. I don’t remember the original context but, since all teeth were unnaturally visible, it seemed perfect for a permanents teeth chart.
Last pose: 25 minutes. I added azure lines to shorten shape where color spread too much. Two days later I reduced a bit the right thigh and added the background. This Pose reminds me heavily of some shepherd in a classic painting.
After the second break, a glass of whine and a piece of cheese, the first long pose: 25 minutes. I went for gouache, and I used yellow and pastes instead of white, because the white’s tube wasn’t opening and I hadn’t time to lose. In the last pause I just found a way to tear it open on the back and use what I could from the almost empty and dry tube for the final drawing.
Second 10 minutes pose, this time I went for watercolors, and they felt great and quick, both for large areas in shadow and also for details, even if I used one round brush only!
After a short break, the 5th pose: 10 minutes. The missing head is accidental. Two days later, I found that incomplete and empty so, feeling I couldn’t work consistently on the human figure without the model, I added the stool and the spotlight that were there, and a colorful background.
Last Saturday, for the first time, I went to the Atelier Solis (in Milan) for a figure drawing afternoon. Diana, the owner, advised for the ones who didn’t knew, that figure drawing is with naked model. Those were the first poses: 4 short poses, 5 minutes each.
When I saw those flowers in the Klosterkroa café on the Hovedøya island I finally understood why Scandinavian floral prints are that much different from the Mediterranean ones. Edited Monday 28th of July 2025.
The ballet flat with a piercing.
I used, for the first time, a multicolored cubic pastel I bought in Tokyo. Buying new colors is part of the pleasure of drawing.
I saw those shoes in a video, slapping as they moved. So, I drew them slapping a bit. I wondered for a while whether that would be a good choice or not, but I love that detail because it feels real, authentic, and fresh to me.
Usually, I’m too lazy to put the lace hoop back in its pocket.
There’s nothing hidden here; really. I just wanted to test my new pen.
Drops. Nothing more, nothing less.
In the middle of the desert, crossroads looks even that way in lanzarote.
In June 2024 we went to Corfú. Here I noticed that prickly pear cactus was different from how I remembered it. Usually I always see it as a total green plant with colorful fruits, there I had the chance to see how the plant is under the external layers of bright green pads. Those are above dark brown pads that look dry on the exterior surface. This part of the plant looks more like a tree trunk than a cactus pad.
She can fit both her feet in one of my slippers.
Is it missing a touch of blue?
Entering this road junction is particularly complex in one of the roads. Unfortunately, it is also the most busy one. So, to avoid the queue, most time is convenient to make three turns instead of one.
Today, I’m lying on the grass, and this is the most noticeable kind of flower.
She wants you to know that her earrings are thinner and smaller than the ones I drew. My mother wants you to know that she has 5 fingers even if looks like she has eight in this drawing.
Blue, green, white and black checks.
This is a color readability chart.
When I saw those flowers in the Klosterkroa café on the Hovedøya island I finally understood why Scandinavian floral prints are that much different from the Mediterranean ones.
Sometimes we need to hear how someone falls into scams to protect ourselves in the future.
This year I finally understood why Nordic flower illustrations are so different from Italian and French ones. I was eating a sandwich at the Klosterkroa café on the Hovedøya island when I noted the flowers on the table. There was a flower so deeply different from any other flower I had ever seen that I realized that I never understood Scandinavian flower illustrations because I have never seen Scandinavian flowers before. Those in the picture are the flower I have experienced as normal in the place I have grown up.
3 meters high. To soften the impact of water, some divers wear a wet suit top. She changed her mind about that dive but was too late to stop.
This year Gemini’s birthday season was utterly hot.
They suggest bringing with you 2 liters of water. My niece’s drawings inspired the style.
So if you want to eat or squeeze them, you should plant the seeds to pay them off.
The snow in Switzerland on April the 1st.
I saw a tweet with a medieval miniature representing a foot over a snake. The tweet said: Ouch! I changed the snake with a rose to avoid someone can think that the foot is the hero because somehow the snake is guilty. Both of them will cry from the pain.
In Mallorca, I have seen palms as I have never seen before. It was in the September of 2021, outside of the City, going north from Palma to Esporles. Usually, they cut the dead leaves from the palm’s trunk, or the strong wind from the sea rips them away. Here dead leafs stayed on palms so, under a bright green tuft of new leaves, dangle a big grey bush that tins out to show the trunk only near the ground. Earth was of a brick color. The mountains were luxuriant green. The asphalt of the streets was the darkest, almost black, I’ve ever seen.
Calculating the ambient impact of missiles should consider not only the production and the explosion itself but also the demolition of the damaged building and the construction of a new one if needed. How many grams of CO2 have I emitted today? The worst damage is always done by those who do not care.
Will the kind Angel of peace statue in Donetsk survive?
Some Italians are so obsessed with food that they can spend time talking about how much bread and oil are perfect together.
I’m very frustrated with the war in Ukraine. When I decided to draw that, I first searched on Wikipedia the history of the peace sign. That sign is composed of the letters N and D of the semaphore flag system. N and D are for Nuclear Disarmament. Here a human being indicates the N letter and stands peacefully together with another one in the letter D position.
Today I feel powerless. 27/02/2022, Milan.
26/02/2022 Today I feel like that. Another war has started and I’m trapped home for contracting covid. Locking emergency exit doors was something normal when I was a teenager. It’s also one of the main reasons they closed most discos and clubs in the 2000s. Clubs owners thought that otherwise, people would enter using emergency exit doors without paying admission tickets. It’s useless inventing panic bars to save lives and then closing them with a padlock. More than stupid, it’s vicious.
My grandfather used to light mulled wine with a candle. Even if some drop of wax will pour in the wine, you’ll filter it like cinnamon and cloves.
I’ve seen the 2020’s Olympic games mostly from my tablet. I was in a parking lot, in front of the vaccination’s hub, waiting for my girlfriend to take her second Covid vaccine shot when I decided to try to look at the horses’ competition. There was only the dressage competition online. I found dressage so boring that soon I decided to watch diving competitions instead. From the dressage competition, I kept that frame in my mind. In the stable, a horse licked an ostler’s head.
A follow-up to the “robots” in the magazine’s cover style.
Design history must know chairs.
I’m listening to “The swarm” by Frank Schatzing recently.
Avere i granchi in tasca. The literal translation is: to have crabs in the pocket. It is an Italian expression that means “To be stingy”. Even if I heard it for the first time just a few weeks ago, it has immediately become my favorite one. All the other Italian expressions for stinginess are racists or ableists. This one instead is cute and fun to me. Have you spotted the moon-shaped skin mole? Both astrology and tarots relate moon and cancer.
On the 7th December 2021, I was driving on the highway toward Turin. That’s a frame from the panorama. I noticed that the upper sky had the same color as the shadows on the mountains. There were no clouds in the sky. I drew it on my sketchbook the following day. Outside it was snowing. The trees became a sentence because the picture of the most stunning landscapes looks boring to me without extra detail.
This fountain is a tribute to the 90’s graphic that was in trend when I was a kid.
My girlfriend and I bought those candlesticks at the flea market on the “Navigli” in Milan. They organize this flea market every last Sunday of the month.
That’s something I’m glad to know, but I hope I will never get to need to do. I’ve been trying for years to fit the length of the sheet with text. I discovered yesterday that I like it most when you can see it does not fit properly.
I found a pleasantly read Harry Potter’s Audiobook on Spotify.
On a page in my sketchbook, I found an unsettling cat with human lips. I can’t remember how it arrived there. Today, looking at the moon in daylight, I realized that the lightened half should be facing the sun.
There was a detail over a door riverfront in Basel that inspired me.
I never liked He-Man. One of the main reasons was that I thought “Skeletor” was a poorly designed character. I recently saw the docuseries “The toys that made us” where they explain the design of He-Man and who is Skeletor. Now I understand that Skeletor isn’t sloppy but horrifying. The choice of giving him a human body, skull face, and a hood isn’t random. He is an existing person. He is the scary man who sells the tickets for the ghost train. I met him just a few years ago, at the “Prater” in Vienna with my girlfriend. We were buying our ticket when the seller surprised us. He left us at the box office and wore a skeleton-masked hood. Then he jumped at the exit of the dark rail tunnel Just in time to scare two girls still sitting in the wagon. Ghost trains usually are more kitsch than frightening. That one wasn’t an exception at all. Anyway, at the end of the rail, we both gasped. We were already in sight of sunlight, even if I was still trying to avoid the last fake spider web when the tickets seller whit the hood and skull face appeared. He managed to frighten us. Even if we knew he would have done that and we should have expected it. P.s. still not liking he-man nor Skeletor, but loved the story behind the design of them.
I’ve never seen raw pistachio. I don’t even know if pistachios grow from a plant, a tree, or a bush.
As a kid, I loved to light candles. My mother loves art and architecture. That’s the reason why she used to bring me to churches even if she wasn’t going to teach me any religion. She taught me that I could light a candle in those candlesticks any time I liked by leaving an offer for maintenance of the place. Nowadays I think that they aren’t using real candles anymore but led ones. So they prevent the burning of candles from darkening the walls and paintings.
As seen on Østergade street in Copenhagen.
This is another artwork inspired by the art exhibition “Alcova”. Four tables with different styles were cut horizontally and presented mixed up.
One of the peaks seen in Switzerland on the road back to Italy.
My art teacher at high school was not only passionate about art’s history but also curious about the equivalent symbolism in modern society. One of his dilemmas was if the car is the evolution of medieval armor or if it is a mechanic surrogate of the horse. The answer he finally found was that car is the modern equivalent of both: armor and horse. Even if it is not a life-changing thought at all, it changed how the “Mecha” movie looks to me. Now I don’t see epic fights, I see only stressed drivers shouting at the other people stuck in the traffic.
Don’t judge the tool. Taste the nuts.
“Alcova” was the name of an exhibition I’ve visited during Design week 2021 in Milan. That exhibition took place in a disused area. One of the buildings was previously a nun’s residence. Here, one of the rooms was filled with those unknown metal symbols. I haven’t understood if they were part of the art installation or part of the original furniture of the room.
It’s cold outside, I gotta go home.
Grandparent: <Bring yourself a sweater, here the weather isn’t so warm.>
Judo's Olympic games. As seen on TV.
Family portrait. Mother and her two grown-up sons with also their robot-workers. The pool cleaner is stuck upside down. P.s. Don’t leave your slippers or any tiny object on the grass. Otherwise, the lawnmower robot will bite and ruin them with its blades.
Wonderful white animals I’ve seen in Tuscany. There’s a sad detail. The number 19 engraved on the leg of that bull is something usual for farm animals. So it is presumable that now that I’m writing about it, it has already been killed and eaten.
Sunbathing at the “Stabilimento Balneare Bagno Delle Donne”, we admired a wonderful sea and cliffs landscape. Over the cliff, stands out the “Rocca Aldobrandesca di Talamone”. It’s an ancient castle with no window at all. Later we went to take a walk around the castle and see the panorama. Standing under these imposing fortress’ walls made me feel awed and overwhelmed. Those kinds of walls look to me so primitive, useless, and also wrong. It’s depressing knowing that there are walls like that are still working and that they aren’t a ruin of an ancient past.
It’s the month of pride. This artwork may fit in even if it came from a slightly different inspiration. Once I heard an African nun explaining the symbolism behind traditional decorative fabric prints. The print that inspired me the most is the one about agriculture. It’s a composition of wheat and hands. Hands’ palms are with several holes that are the symbol of hard work. That stimulated me to think about figurative symbolism as a decorative pattern. Weaved fingers become to me the symbol of deep friendship. Colors’ inspiration came later from European flags. The idea was born while I was watching Eurovision because I appreciate shows aimed at bound countries and creating an international shared culture. So that artwork speaks about friendship and community. We should all aim to be the best and most inclusive community ever. We always should.
Turin’s water fountain on a garnet-red background.
My wonderful girlfriend bought this bubble candle here.
I’m good with paper boats, but I never tried to fold a paper crane. I have a paper crane at home, is a present by a former colleague.
Just the peach emoji.
Statyress in a glade standing with a trumpet. It actually can be around 10 am or at 4 pm, with the moon in daylight. I love when the pale moon and bright sun both shine in the skies.
Fresh, tasty and crunchy salad.
Which is your favorite merman?
Are those sheep with human faces or humans with sheep’s body?
Aka “Twitter”, “WhatsApp group” or “Coral”. I just wanted to draw a monster. I didn’t want it to be scary or dangerous, just odd, with lots of eyes and mouths. He claimed by itself also noses and ears. When it was done it recalled in my imagination every kind of digital chat I’ve ever met.
If you have ever been on Milano’s underground metropolitan train you can recognize the handler. I’ve been a commuter for sport, study, and work for several years of my life. Most of the time I’ve done it on standard time when the public transport is full of unremarkable people and the only nice thing you can do is reading. But if you move during an unusual time you can see the more strange and the most stylish people in the city. Those people are interesting but a bit odd and looks somehow stylish and kitsch at the same time. They are dressed up but also a bit sweaty or dirty for the time spent roaming the city.
Don’t you think sometimes you should thank the objects that make your life better like you thank gods? Those are the glasses.
During this winter staycation, my partner and I decided to change our kitchen wall units. It hasn’t been easy. Those screws and washers were the expansion bolts that hooked up the former wall units. They look like flowers to me.
No snow lies and no grass grows below highway interchanges.
I’m a bit obsessed with drowning eyes inside the lips. Here there is another one I made in 2008.
She is vittoria.
The devil’s avocado. Avocado sounds really similar to advocate “Avvocato” in Italian. I know, translating puns sucks.
Birds on the carrefour sign. I love the unfinished look for this drawing, but I think I will eventually color cars, ground, and sky too.
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