Category: sketchbook blue 2012-14

Warped spacetime in earthy tones, eyes floating away in the sea, and a void.

Markers and ballpoint pen.

Marker, Sharpie marker, ballpoint pen, gesso, white gel pen. A disembodied bird head with dog-headed snake tongue (puffy variety), lace, and warped spacetime grid.

Years and years ago this website had hundreds of pages of portfolio and sketchbook images and that’s all here somewhere, hidden in a secret folder I may never open. I’d still like to share that stuff somewhere, especially the sketchbooks as I keep dipping into them and recycling images and ideas into new work. I can’t handle dealing with all those old html pages so I’m just going to start sharing them here.

This big blue sketchbook dates from 2012 into 2013, at a time when I had a studio in an old house in downtown Windsor above a lovely restaurant called Rino’s Kitchen (RIP), was taking Spanish classes for fun at the university, working a few sessions at the bingo hall every month as a charity volunteer on behalf of Artcite, Inc (link: Artcite), and was embarking on my very fun but short-lived stint in roller derby.

It’s a standard 8.5×11″ black hardback sketchbook, but I took off the cover and replaced it with a sturdier one, covered with some old woodcut prints with leather spine and corners.

Here’s the front cover:

And the drawing on the front endpaper and flyleaf:

(whoops, I glued that endpaper down with a bit of a crinkle in it. This is why we don’t exhibit our sketchbooks!)

And here’s the first page, which I remember drawing while sitting under the front gate canopy at House Redhair, our camp at the Pennsic War (link: Pennsic War). This would have been Pennsic 42, summer of 2012. I don’t actually like drawing with pencils in my sketchbook and the back of that flyleaf there is why. The rest of this book is drawn with things that don’t smear: ballpoint pen (Zebra F-301 7mm, my favourite), markers, bingo dabbers, and lots and lots of white gel pen (yes I buy those in bulk). Although I started with the first page, the rest of the book was drawn all out of order, and a few pages are used bingo card sheets I drew on and tipped into the book later.