HAPPY HAND draws animals by Franco Cosimo Panini
For those who were children in my generation, the concept of drawing was copying or coloring something already drawn. I remember this with great clarity. I have no memory of any of my own fantasy drawings, but instead I remember the many Mickey Mouse characters copied freehand or even better traced against the light on overlapping sheets.
Perhaps because of this childhood story of mine, when some time ago I happened upon this book of children's drawings in my hand, I instantly fell in love with it. I was rummaging with Daniela, my wife, among the books at Odradek-a small bookstore on Via Principe Eugenio in Milan run by Felice and Anna, booksellers like there are few-when suddenly in her hands appeared this book with a white cover just splashed with red.
It is a beautiful book from which overflows the talent of an author who goes by the nickname Happy Hand (and never was a more appropriate nickname) and his assistant Alessandro Sanna. There are animal portraits at once sketchy and perfect, drawn with a simplicity, poetry and genius worthy of Bruno Munari or some other master of art lent to children's publishing. Each of the animals is elicited with a mark so simple, so natural that looking at them I believed myself capable of making them myself (which, as Munari teaches, means capable of RE-doing them, genius always being originality).
Each drawing on the left page leaves a blank sheet of paper on the right as an invitation to imitate these marks, thus creating one's own personal zoo. Each animal is accompanied by a micro poem that takes its cue from Happy Hand's stroke. Thus we discover that "the eagle is a boomerang with legs," that "the swallow is a coat hanger for invisible clothes," and much more.
In the book you will find as many as 77 drawings, one more beautiful than the other. I have selected a few of them, just to make you want to find a child to give this little masterpiece as a gift.
I will leave you now, however, because I have an appointment with my hummingbird.