Looking Through Old Sketchbooks

Along side eating, napping, and drawing, looking through old sketchbooks is one of my favorite pastimes! You get to uncover anew lost characters, creatures, or stories. As well as see how your style has changed. Sometimes I redraw these lost old sketches. Recently, I got a chance to look through my old sketchbooks when I started the illustrations for my sister's novel (those will be a future entry). In one of them, I found a colored-in-drawing I had done of the cruel elfin queen from the Tam Lin fairy tale.


Here's a close up. Just a tid bit: the day I drew this picture, on August 2nd, my mom told me to draw ugly things. Yep, this was the one that started it all.


Below is the original. I love the style of the Tam Lin illustrations. They are my favorite out of all of the illustrations in the Enchanted World : Fairies and Elves book. I'm particurally drawn to tall dark Queens, such as this one and the Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. They are regal, cold, and awesome!



This book is beautiful and a treasure. My mom says she bought it in a used book store when we were very little so I've always remembered us having it. The illustrations include paintings by Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, J W. Waterhouse, John Anster Fitzgerald and others. The Enchanted World is a series of books each dedicated to different topics, such as fairies and elves, dwarves, giants, and even the fall of Camelot. I can tell you that I was surprised to find this series in our local public library. The fairies and elves book is the only one we have. I frown at the $7.50 marked on the inside because this book is priceless in my eyes.


Anyways. After looking at that drawing I did, I decided to do something in the same fashion (graphite with colored pencil). This faery maiden, whatever you like to call her, is not anyone in particular. She's probably one of many faeries glimpsed in their glimmering midnight procession.


The close up.

Ugly Creatures

I found this wonderful book in Barnes and Nobles called On Ugliness edited by Umberto Eco. It has great photos from art history of Medieval and Renaissance illustrations of hell, the final judgment and other stuff (Dada art, Mythological inspired drawings). There is even a photo (mind you a photo) of a man holding another man's severed head! How disgusting, I know, but really cool in a bizarre way!!!!! I bought the book with some of my birthday money!


The book!

As you can tell I have embraced my mom's advice of drawing more ugly things. I've never really explored animal creatures and humanoid monsters before in my art; I mostly drew elves and faeries and other such things. As a result, I don't have a storage of grotesque images in my head so I have to use outside sources for inspiration. I look at objects around me and see if they have an interesting almost beastly form to them or I refer to picutures of insects. Sometimes I just use the basic human figure and distort it in uncomfortable ways (elongating the neck here or giving it extra arms etc). This particular lady faery's head was inspired by a Kleenex.


This next one is a page of assorted monsters I created. I just sort of compiled them together on the page as I thought of them. It's interesting how they flow together; that was unintentional.


For this first one, I thought it would be interesting if the creature had its arms on its back and the wings in the front, opposite of an angel or something. The body is more delicate but creepy and pointy none-of-the-less. The head is your average gargoyle/goblin head.


This next one is my favorite. I envisioned the pose before the creature. I'm not exactly sure what it is doing; it's sort of siting on a cloth strip that is holding it in mid air. I'm really excited about the hollowed out chest and multiple faces. This is definitely the most dynamic one.


This guy reminds me a bit of Predator, which was not my original intent; I think it's because of the hair and face. I was going for a buggy sort of spider look for the eyes (it has lots of eyes) and and a skull/bone head with no bottom jaw. Its armor and blades are part of its skin, I guess like an insect. I imagine it being a soldier or guard to a fortress. All the intruder hears before they are slashed across the face is the clinking of hooves on the stone floors.


Mom requested this ugly fellow. She asked my to draw something that smiles like her sometimes. Of course I exagerated it; she never looks like she's about to eat someone. The hood he... or it is wearing in not clothe, but its own skin. This fellow is completely dressed in his own pooling, wrinkling skin. I would be surprised to ever see him not hungry. Ever wonder why he has two hands tied to stings when he has four of his own? They make it easier to gather his food, not the salad kind of food, mind you.


This final creature has three mouths on his face. Those are all tongues coming out; they smell the air like snake tongues. The body is most definitely inspired by an insect. Rather than legs it has arms that taper from muscle to just bone. I would love to see it scuttle around. Oooh gross!

School is out for Summer!

I have finished my first year of college and summer has come almost not soon enough!!! The last project I worked on was a collaborative sculpture piece with my friend. We made wooden puppets; she designed a goat/frog prey creature and I designed its cat/bird-of-prey predator creature counter part. It was killer!!! Our puppets required sanding with drills, rasping, laminating plywood, getting gorilla glue all over our hands, and lots of other sweaty physical labor. My thumbs were cramped for two weeks!!!! In the end we didn't finish the projects by critic day because the puppets were way too ambitious for the amount of time we had to work. We still got good grades because all of the time we put into them.

I desperately need my summer now to recover from our intensive puppets and I hoped not to work with wood for a while. But alas! Mother dear is re-doing the kitchen and I had to help sand down all of the cabinets to remove the varnish. Once again, I find myself using power tools.

Moving out of the dorms gave me a chance to uncover some of my old and new drawings and I have selected a few to share with you:

This drawing was our second flayed muscle drawing, this time of a leg and arm. I like this flayed drawing the best!


This next drawing was our final assignment in my drawing studio class. We had to do a drawing of the nude figure. I drew mine with NuPastel on tainted paper.


This piece, neither a drawing nor a painting, was actually from my fall semester. Ever since my mom told me to draw more ugly things, I have been ...well... drawing more ugly things. This creature was inspired by a clock in my sister's living room. Okay, for those of you wondering, I used markers, my Prismacolor markers.


This final piece is an oil painting I did in my Project: Painting and Printmaking class. The assignment was to trade painting surfaces with someone else in the class, start a painting, trade back with that person, and then respond to what they had painted on your canvas or canvas board. The girl who traded with me painted something that looked like dreadlocks. Mom asked it she could have this painting the second I showed her it; I don't know where she will put it.