These days, I typically keep two sketchbooks at a time. A larger sketchbook and a smaller sketchbook. But things were different growing up. My teachers always pushed unto me the need to work in one of those large, black cover sketchbooks. This went on from childhood until the end of college. It was always a requirement in my art classes for some reason or other.
For the most part, I had a strong aversion to those large bulky books with their rough toothy papers. Despite my teachers’ insistances, I’d draw on any loose sheets of paper I could get my tiny little hands on. I accumulated piles of those papers across several folders throughout the years. It wasn’t until middle school, that I got tired of hoarding all that loose paper in various folders. So I finally began to work in those huge books of my own volition.
This continued until I finally finished college and realized that I could be free of this habit. Online, I’d seen so many artists that I admired drawing in these smaller sketchbooks. I decided that I wanted to try this for myself and bought a “Large” Moleskine (what they consider “large” anyway). For a time, I loved it because it felt easier for me to fill out the pages. But old habits die hard and I eventually went back to keeping a larger book alongside the smaller one. I affectionately refer to them as Sketchbooks Major and Sketchbooks Minor.
Breaking in the Smaller Sketchbook
Rollerball pens in Moleskine sketchbook, 2013
These are the first two pages of this sketchbook. Hesitation for the sake of making my first pages pretty would have stopped me from drawing starting the sketchbook in the first place. So I strived to make the first page as unerringly ugly as I could tolerate. I started off by writing the beginning of Orbyss Archives, which I even drew lettering guides for. The narrative originally began in The Void and I really wanted to illustrate what that looked like. Then, I moved on to exploring what Jake’s mother might look like; before drawing a really weird, janked up looking Goomba
When I first started working at Blick, I became obsessed with these Uniball Vision Elite Rollerball Pens that we carried. There was something about the thick colorful lines and the pooling ink that really drew me in. I bought then in every color we had and went to town in this sketchbook.
Some more squiggles, Jake’s mom, and Detective Kandi Jaqueline Noble
Rollerball pens, liquid watercolors, and markers in Moleskine sketchbook, 2013
Picking up from the previous page, I continued scribbling away on that left page. It may be worth noting that I was also experimenting with refilling those pens with different colors of ink than what they came with. The scribbles were the best way to get the new colors to emerge. I also did another doodle of Jake’s mom but with his dad now also. On the right side is a simple character study of one of my best friend’s characters, Kandi. I was playing around to see how the paper in these books handled watercolor. The answer is not very well.
Mage Punk Logo Sketches
Rollerball pens in Moleskine sketchbook, 2013
I’ve always had a fairly solid idea of how I wanted the Mage Punk logo to look. From conception, I always had the idea in my mind that the logo should be a juxtaposition of two disparate concepts. The classicality of a Mage meeting with the rebellious nature of Punk culture. While there are a few ideas here that I rejected for final logo, a few of them feel like they could be solid concepts on their own. Drawing these was a lot of fun and I hope to revisit the other sketches in the future.
A collection sketchbooks
While putting this post together I started thinking about going through my old sketchbooks and divvying out pages from them throughout every other Thursday next year starting from the first Thursday in January. I did some calculations and doodles below.
If you’re having trouble following those numbers, don’t sweat it. I’m probably overthinking the whole thing anyway. At this point in time it kind of feels like overthinking is really my aesthetic. Unfortunately, my room is a mess and I have no idea where all my older sketchbooks have scuttled off to. Until that mystery is figured out, I’ll just queue up other art posts and hope for the best.
Thank you for reading~