As artists there are those of us who wear many hats (no, no, I mean other than at those weird loft parties…), taking on several styles or different types of visual art for different reasons; sometimes out of necessity to both make a living and pursue personal interests, sometimes out of a desire to be versatile and sometimes just out of a love for working and experimenting with many different types of art.

I suspect that Enrico Casarosa works in his many artistic areas for the latter reason, just because he enjoys and appreciates them and wants very much to enjoy all that they have to offer. Professionally, Casarosa is a storyboard artist for Pixar. He is also a character designer, comics artist, designer, illustrator, blogger and inveterate sketcher.

Among his other accomplishments, Casarosa started and still oversees the SketchCrawl events, outdoor group drawing “expeditions” held in various cities around the world (some history here and here). The next Worldwide SketchCrawl is this Saturday, April 22, 2006. A discussion board of the arrangements being made in various cities can be found here.

I briefly profiled Casarosa in my first mention of Sketchcrawl last summer. He has several web sites related to his many pursuits. Enricocasarosa.com serves as a central hub and features information about his publications, including SketchCrawling, containing some of his Sketchcrawl sketches and comics related to the events (photos here), and Fragments Intermezzo, with charcoal figure drawings, paintings and sketches.

The main site also talks about his gallery shows, one of which, Three Trees make a Forest at Gallery Nucleus in LA last November, he shared with Ronnie Del Carmen and the wonderful Tadahiro Uesugi (see my post about Tadahiro Uesugi from last fall).

There is a Portfolio page on Casarosa’s main site with links to many of his projects, as well as a resume and bio, but some of the material may be out of date.

It’s a little disconcerting bouncing around between Casarosa’s sites, because they are many and not always up to date or linked in a consistent fasion. The most recent information usually surfaces on Enrico’s blog, which features photos, ramblings, discussions of art materials and pointers to other sites and artists as well as news and postings of Casarosa’s own work (like the illustration for a wine label, above, left).

Occasionally you’ll find treasures like his online mini-comic review of Canned Coffee (above, right). Casarosa has also posted a complete online comic called Haiku 5-7-5, as well as online previews for his print comic MIA. Casarosa has also participated in the excellent Flight comics anthologies (the new one of which is due this June).