Artist of the Month: Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri

This is a tricky one. 99% of Serpieri's work is pornographic in nature and not really appropriate to this blog. Even these images could be a bit dodgy to some people, but there you are, hopefully, no one is going to faint.

Serpieri has for a long time been one of my personal favourite figurative artists both because of his accuracy and his 'line'. My tutors at art school used to talk about an artists 'quality of line' all the time and, unless I seriously misunderstood the lesson, then I can't think of any draughtsman who even comes close to Serpieri. His genius lies in his cross hatching which he uses to describe the form of his subject perfectly. Fortunately for me, he likes to draw voluptuous females where his long curving lines are most effective. I've emulated this style myself for years, so much so that its informed my own method of drawing. Alas, I'm not as good at drawing the human figure as Serpieri is, and frankly, I'm not as obsessed with the female form... at least, not to draw... I'm also heavily influenced by Kurt Trampedach's line which is far looser (read messier) than Serpieri's.

I first came across Serpieri in the late 1980's when I was at boarding school for a year. Coming home for week ends I'd often have to wait to catch a connecting bus in the city of Randers. One day I wandered into a book shop where a copy of 'Morbus Gravis Vol 2' caught my eye. The cover image of Serpieri's main character Druuna was what caught my attention, but it was the beautiful style of the drawings that held it. I didn't have the money to buy the album then, but several years later I finally tracked it down. Since then there have been numerous other albums released in the series but as time as passed Serpieri has all but abandoned the original story and spun off into highly personal dreamscape where he explores numerous sexual themes. Frankly, the Morbus Gravis albums are a bit sad. The style is still as beautiful as ever, in fact more so as he polishes his line with each passing year, but it feels wasted. Pearls before swine and all that. Its too bad Serpieri doesn't seem to do much beyond the pornographic because his line lends itself to the classical.

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