Luca Laurenti, aka Mklane, is an illustrator, graphic designer and art director from Italy. Inspired by everything from celebrities to every day fashionable people, his work stands out in its graphic, photorealistic representations. Luca first began drawing when he was a small child and hasn’t stopped since. He more recently has channeled his love of drawing into the fields of illustration and design. He is constantly taking in various visual cues and translating them into the language of good design. His work is expressive and emotional and he brings a fresh perspective to the existing definitions of portraiture and illustration. He works from life as well as photographs and his media ranges from pencil and paper to digital photo-illustrations. For him, design is a game of unstable equilibriums, achieving a balance “between fullness and emptiness, white and black.” There isn’t a doctrine or a special philosophy behind his work, he just answers the uncontrollable necessity to “communicate to others what I see.”

Most recently he has collaborated with photographer Cameron Krone on a series of pieces where he illustrates over photography creating a new cross-pollination between photography and drawing.

He has worked in publishing and fashion for international clients such as Billboard Magazine, Rolling Stone, Sportswear International, XL Magazine (La Repubblica), Urb Magazine, Cover, Toy2r and Graniph. He has published his work in several books, most recently “Illustration Now 2” by Taschen.

Luca is based in Rome, Italy.