Duration: I’ve worked for Italian publishing house Logos Edizioni for about one year.

Location: Pescara, Italy.

Education: BA in architecture from Università degli Studi “Gabriele d’Annunzio” Chieti-Pescara in Chieti, Italy, and Pescara, Italy.

Career path: I’ve been drawing since I was a kid, but it was only a short time ago that I got into illustration. I did not consistently cultivate my passion for drawing after my university studies, because I wanted to experience different things. Then I discovered illustrated books, and a whole  world opened up to me—a world that I knew little about. At the time, I thought the best way to get noticed would be by participating in contests; I’ve now received awards in Italy and abroad, like placing first in the Illustrators Annual 2017 from the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Bologna, Italy, and winning the Overall New Talent Award from the Association of Illustrators’ World Illustration Awards 2017.

Artistic influences:  I try to draw in a dreamy, conceptual and communicative way, capturing a strong emotion in a fragment and touching the soul through a drawing. One of my favorite artists is Caravaggio, because of the way he interpreted the chiaroscuro oil painting technique and his mastery of playing with light. I love art, cinema, literature and music.

Approach: My style is really simple: graphite and digital. I mainly freehand draw using graphite then retouch some of my works in Photoshop. Sometimes I need to add something else like a background or an object, and I end up assembling and disassembling work digitally. It’s exciting to be able to make thousands of changes to a drawing using digital technology, and it gives you a lot of creative freedom.

Basically, my illustrations arise from an emotion and a project. I only draw who I am and what I feel around me with a style that plays on the spectator’s emotions. The emotion that emerges from reading a text is what I want to convey.

Aspirations: I’d like to make illustrated books and everything that has to do with that fantastic world. I’m now working to make the covers for a series of Italian books, diving into each book to burst through its essence in a single drawing—it’s a big challenge!

Philosophy: Work hard, with tenacity and patience. Don’t hurry. Be curious so you can reinterpret the real world with your sensitivity and share your personal version of it.