A SKETCHY DATE
Italian artist draws his Canadian experience after finally meeting long-distance girlfriend in Toronto,
He was in Italy. She was in Canada. Both artists, the two met on the internet when she criticized one of his drawings. He hastily fixed it. She disappeared. But as time went on, they reconnected and the digital fairy tale began.
Months later, the couple — Simone Ferriero and Krisi Soderstrom — met for the first time face-to-face in Toronto. But their first days together weren’t just documented in selfies. Instead Ferriero employed an oldschool method for their modern day romance, preserving their time together in a series of sketches tinted with watercolour.
“The first thing I thought actually was to take a video from the moment I came off the plane,” Ferriero told the Star over the phone, now back in Italy.
“Then I thought it would be too complicated and it would break the magic of the moment. Because of, you know, a device between us.”
And there had been devices between them for a while. The pair initially connected because of Ferriero’s use of Twitch — a live streaming video platform. After a friend sent Soderstrom his stream, she tuned in.
The arm of his drawing was too big, he recalled her saying. “I was like, ‘OK. I will correct it,’” Ferriero said. “And I corrected, and then she disappeared! Basically she just wanted to troll me the first time we talked.” Her recollection is sweeter. Soderstrom told the Star she heard an artist was doing $5 commissions online, which she thought was extremely low. “He was just selling himself super short for some reason,” she said.
As time went on, the two connected on other platforms. He asked if she wanted to draw something together. And they did — a pair of sketches from the video game Resident Evil. They started talking and, at one point, he said she asked what he thought about long-distance relationships.
“I am kind of dumb and said I don’t believe in long distance relationships,” Ferriero told the Star.
But after learning that Soderstrom had feelings for him, he quickly changed his tune. In August, the pair started dating online.
“Even though the panels show that it’s very happy and there are no problems, he left out a lot of crying,” KRISI SODERSTROM DURHAM COLLEGE STUDENT
He soon booked a flight to visit her in Toronto, and on Dec.16 she arrived at the airport to meet him.
“It was anxiety-ridden, when we were waiting for him. I’d never been to an airport before,” Soderstrom said. But when she saw him, she tore through the crowds.
“I’m trying to say excuse me, but I’m literally just speeding through,” she said. “I ran to him and almost knocked him over when I hugged him.”
Over the ensuing weeks, Ferriero sketched moments from their time together, from the Royal Ontario Museum to a trip to Oshawa for Christmas with Soderstrom’s family. He said the trip was an emotional one. “The final 2017 months were really, really out of this world for me,” he said. Soderstrom is planning to visit him in Italy in May, when she finishes up the academic year at Durham College.
But she also cautioned people not to mistake their relationship for picture-perfect based off the illustrations. “It’s not,” she said. “It’s extremely hard.”
The pair had their fights and had to work things out while he was here.
She wanted to include a last panel where they said goodbye. When he walked to his gate, she walked beside him until she couldn’t anymore. “I just held his hand, and then he was gone,” she said. She cried on the train home from the airport.
“Even though the panels show that it’s very happy and there are no problems, he left out a lot of crying,” Soderstrom said.
But she loves him, she told the Star. “It was like a dream,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting this.”