I want to tell you how the cover of my latest novel was born, The beautiful season.
In the creative process there is something that, ultimately, resembles one of the characterizing traits of the story told: the mystery of identity.
I have been drawing and painting for many yearsas well as with traditional systems, also with the aid of digital techniques. I use pencil, ballpoint pen, inks, acrylics or graphic board indifferently. I like to work on illusionistic processes which transfer an idea from a simple sketch to a complex work, often reversing the order of the factors, and arriving at a result that is the result of a constant mix between “analog” technique and digital technique.
Returning to my book, someone imagined that the photograph of the woman on the cover had been generated by artificial intelligencein reality it was a long and complex elaboration of mixed techniques.
The images that illustrate Francesco Carofiglio’s creative process
For some time now, and in rapid acceleration, several have been made available to all, and at affordable prices applications that allow, thanks to an algorithm, to transform a few lines of instructions into packaged images.
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The same thing happened for the cover of The beautiful season. I had an initial idea, and I started jotting down a series of sketches. Then I moved on to a first painting done with the graphic board. And finally I transformed that painting into a photographic reproduction, interpolating different software, which was as faithful as possible to the idea of the initial sketch and the painting that followed.
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It is a process that requires a lot of practice and just as much patience, it passes through the search, not so much for perfect verisimilitude, but rather for a small human truth.
However, a postcard was created of the painting, the intermediate step of the process, and distributed months ago in a limited edition. The photographic portrait of the cover of The beautiful season therefore, beyond the outcomes, which everyone has the right to appreciate or criticize, it is fundamentally the translation of an idea, of a climate, of a small world that those who read the story will perhaps be able to find again.
A life that has existed, from the beginning, in one of the parallel worlds of my imagination.
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THE AUTHOR AND HIS NEW NOVEL – Francesco Carofiglio he’s back with a new novel, The beautiful season (Garzanti). A book that makes you reflect on life, choices, pain and hope. An intimate story, in which to dive and get lost. And in the end, find each other.
Writer, architect, illustrator and director, Francesco Carofiglio, has published, among others, The summer of the black dog (Marsilio 2008), The house in the woods with his brother Gianrico (Rizzoli 2014), The summer of enchantment (Bancarella selection award 2020) e Our lives (Piemme 2021).
