Day 3 of 31 Day Challenge #RottyHalloween

I've challenged myself to draw something for Halloween every day in October, and The Rots' Facebook followers are holding me to it (I hope).

Day 3 kind of made me feel a little naked. When you draw in your sketchbook, it's supposed to be just for you. A place to experiment and let your guard down, knowing nobody else is going to see it and form an opinion.

Here's what I drew in my Moleskine, and it isn't the best thing I've ever done. I drew it with a Pilot Precise V5 marker, so there was no erasing when it wasn't going the way I had planned. But I promised a sketch every day, and this is what happened.

So, yeah. A little naked.

Day 1 of 31 Day Challenge #RottyHalloween

I've challenged myself to draw something for Halloween every day in October, and The Rots' Facebook followers are holding me to it (I hope).

Here's Day 1.

Today was just a sketch but, depending on how things work out, I'm hoping other days can be something more finished.

That, and I'm hoping I can come up with 31 subjects for Halloween.

Vampire Bats

Scanned directly from my sketchbook, here's a page of bats to celebrate Halloween. I started the page with the idea that I was going to fill the whole thing with bats. I wanted to push myself to come up with as many ideas as I could because I tend to start sketching and get lazy about it way too soon. As you can see, the first ones I drew at the top of the page are nowhere near as good as the ones that showed up on the bottom. (Click the image to see it biggie-sized.)

I'm working on painting a few of these little guys on my iPad. I found a fun new app called Auryn Ink that paints like watercolor. It even has a tilt function that, if you tilt your iPad, it makes the pigment collect in the direction you're tilting. I'm playing around with it to use as the background.

The next page in my sketchbook is all about pumpkins. I've noticed in recent years that pumpkin nummies are a whole lot more numerous than when I was growing up. Pumpkin gobs. Pumpkin cake. Pumpkin muffins. Pumpkin donuts. Pumpkin Spice Latte. Pumpkin soup. Pumpkin rolls. I think all we had when I was little was pumpkin pie. It's too bad this only lasts about two months out of the year. I haven't found a pumpkin nummy yet that I didn't like.

Friday the 13th

A black cat for your Friday the 13th.

I drew this with a marker in my sketchbook first, took a photo of the drawing with my iPad, and brought the drawing into the Procreate app to add color. I tweaked the colors and added a tiny bit of texture in the background in Photoshop.

Sketchbook Project Special Edition 2012—Cover #sketchbookproject

So I went and joined the Art House Co-op and their Special Edition Sketchbook Project. They're going to print at least one spread from each sketchbook they get back in a series of books they'll be publishing documenting the project.

I know. I almost have time for this.

I decided to try out a relatively new medium for me: markers. That might be an idiot of an idea, but I've also decided to draw things that aren't so new for me: Square Kats. Hopefully the markers will be kind.

Here's the cover and the first page pages:

Sketchbook Project Limited Edition #sketchbookproject

Alright. Now I did it. I went and signed up for another Sketchbook Project, this time the Limited Edition version.

I'm such a sucker.

But I have a plan: I'm planning on filling it with Square Kats that I would like to eventually paint and include in a calendar (or two). So really, it will be totally useful in the future.

For the actual Sketchbook Project sketchbook, I've decided to use some of my new Pitt Artist pens. Well, some of them are new just because I haven't used them yet (although I bought them to try out almost a year and a half ago), and the rest of them are so new I haven't received the order I placed for them in the mail yet.

If you're not familiar with the Sketchbook Project, here's a rundown:

1. I order a sketchbook from the Art House Co-op and pick a "theme" (my theme is Pictures and descriptions)
2. They send a sketchbook specifically for me, with a bar code on the back identifying me and my sketchbook
3. I draw in said sketchbook (this seems to be the part that's taking the longest)
4. I send the sketchbook back to the Art House Co-op (in Brooklyn, NY)
5. They scan all the pages of my sketchbook and include them in their digital library and post them on their site
6. The sketchbooks are cataloged as a permanent fixture of the Brooklyn Art Library, available for patrons around the world to enjoy (hopefully)
7. Every time someone "checks out" my sketchbook it will be logged through the bar code on the back, and I will receive an email that it was checked out
8. At least one full spread from my sketchbook will be included in a series of art books along with other Sketchbook Project sketchbook pages from other artists
9. That's it

They limited the number of sketchbooks for this project to 5,000, and all 5,000 sketchbooks have been grabbed up.

I'm thinking I must be crazy, for a couple of reasons (not the regular reasons this time). First, do I really think I have time for another Sketchbook Project? Not really, but the lure of getting my illustrations in a book was too much to pass up. And second, those Pitt Artist Pens aren't the cheapest things in the world. And I went and bought a crapload. But they were on sale. With free shipping if I spent enough money.

Yeah, I must be crazy.

Somebody else's sketchbook book

Gris Grimly (one of my favorite illustrators) decided to publish a book totally full of sketches he's made over a 13-year period. (Which 13-year period, I really don't know.) It's called Gris Grimly's Atrum Secretum: 13 Years of Hidden Truths, and will be available on Amazon October 1.

The book is beautiful, inspiring and discouraging all at once. Some of what he considers sketches I wouldn't be able to do on my best day. They make me want to do better at the same time they're punching me in the face and screaming there's really no hope.

Except for a title page, one end page explaining about the book, and copyright info just inside the end paper, the book is all about the sketches. The only text in the book was written when the sketches were drawn, so pages aren't filled with insight and analysis or whatever filler usually invades books like this.
 

I bought my copy directly from Gris, so mine is a little different than the one available on Amazon. (Mine looks like the one above.) In mine, he drew an original sketch on one of the pages before he sent it out (image to the right) and included a signed and numbered sketch coupon "certificate" to authenticate the drawing as original.

Desperately Seeking Tim Burton

Dear Mr. Burton,

I've found myself in a desperate rut, the likes of which you've managed to retrieve me from in the past, and I'm hoping you will be available again sometime soon.

January a year ago, I made a trek to the Museum of Modern Art, specifically to view your work on display there. I bought a membership just so I wouldn't have to stand in line with all the other saps who had to wait to get in.

The rooms that housed your exhibit were terribly crowded; I'm sure we were well beyond the building's fire code. Sardines, as it were. But I managed to see everything, just to make sure I didn't miss anything that might later turn out to be something I would have liked to have seen.

After I squeezed my way through all the rooms I took a breather. I bought some stuff. I ate some stuff and, in spite of the sardine thing, I decided I needed to get myself back in the middle of that exhibit.

So I did.

This time I knew exactly what I needed to see again, so I jumped out of the line that snaked around the rooms and headed straight for the drawings.

The drawings, as you know, were watercolor outlined in pen, so there was really nothing out of the ordinary there. Using the media in that way was nothing new, and had never been a source of inspiration for me. So that couldn't really have been the attraction.

Why was I still there? Why couldn't I take my eyes off these images? Why were these images so much better than what I conjured in my own sketchbooks?

I think what sucked me back into those rooms and set my sparks flying was that unrestrained childlike imagination. How does an artist allow himself to let everything fly out the window like that? The caricatures were well beyond caricatures. Arms and legs and tails and horns and whatever other body parts that could conceivably be conceived as a body part were attached to shapes that weren't really bodies until simulated body parts had been attached.

But you knew that.

Stripes and checkerboards and spirals and dipping horizons added to my acute sense of instability, and all I could do was stand in front of them and try to soak in as much as my little brain could soak in, in the hopes that some day that freedom would spew out in my own work.

On the train ride home I drew. Over the next few months I drew some more. I was inspired and ready to take on my own sketchbook demons and wrestle them into something I could proudly show the world.

Things seep away over time, however. It's been another year, and I seem to have lost that thing. That permission you had given me to create outrageousnous. Those weird images that had been crisscrossing around in my head. And, ultimately, the hope that somewhere down the line it would all be worth it.

Dear Tim (do you mind if I call you Tim?), please send me a sign. Something. Anything. Something to get me back on track. Something to help me find my monsters. I'm afraid right now they're lost, and I'm also afraid they're scared. And hungry. I know I am. I desperately need to bring them home.

Please help me bring them back home.

Signed,

Nora

P.S. Thank you kindly for allowing my family to give me your art book last Christmas and I'm eagerly awaiting your and Danny's CD box set, as my Alice in Wonderland soundtrack is quite possibly wearing thin.

Dracula sketch

Here's a sketch I did for a painting I'm hoping to start soon. The final size will be 24"x24", and finished in acrylic (and possibly oil) on wood.

I'm planning on doing a bunch of paintings of ghoulish types, each doing musical thingies. Looking for a name for the series (other than "Monster Mash").

I haven't forgotten about the elephant! The animal series has just been slower to climb to the top of the to-do list. It'll happen...eventually.

Boris the Clown & Wiggles

 
This little guy's name is Boris, and he's the freshest Rot in my sketchbook.

I drew him in response to a fellow illustrator who saw my kid's illustration portfolio and told me the pictures would probably scare the children (I guess I deserved that). To get in the right frame of mind, he told me, I should be thinking more along the lines of "clowns and birthday parties."

Clowns.

I've always found clowns to be disturbing. And now I find myself trying to draw them.

And they've all been pretty much disturbing.