Review: Memento Bento by Alessandra Criseo (Mais2)

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Thanks to Alessandra Criseo (aka Mais2) for sending me her book Memento Bento to be featured here. Alessandra Criseo is an Italian illustrator based in London.

Memento Benton is the travelogue sketchbook of Criseo's trip to Japan in 2014. It was her first trip out of Europe and from the vibe of the book I can tell that she's very excited and totally geeked out.

It's quite funny reading her adventures and misadventures. She drew the food she ate, gushed over cute girls, students and babies in strollers, marvelled at the self-cleaning toilet bowl, visited many places and bought a lot of stuff.

The art is nice. The line art is assured and confident, clear and defined. There's a very illustrative comic style to it, but not the usual manga style. She uses mostly pastel colours and it works very well. If I'm not wrong they should be from coloured markers because I saw coloured marker swatches on the second page. The drawings are not the observational location sketching type, but more comical, like how she's sleeping in a box of sushi on the book's cover.

You can buy the A5-size 60-page paperback at her online store. It's priced at £15 not including shipping.

It's an enjoyable and fun visual journal.

You can check out more of Criseo's work at

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