The owls are not what they seem

Here's the awful truth: for the past several years, I've been working start to finish digitally, and I stopped using my sketchbook very often. When I did, I was frustrated that I couldn't draw in it the way used to when I drew in it all the time. I'd still draw everyday, but it was different, and it was mostly for jobs. About a year ago I started using it again for preliminary sketches, studies, and fun. I've come to realize the power of the sketchbook is that it makes me think and process in a different way than drawing digitally does. I can see and revisit my past work and there's a different and more immediate tactile experience*. The ever present need and fear to get it right or make it perfect is gone (or at least muffled) and I can concentrate on other, more important aspects.

A few days before we moved up to KC, I finished my previous sketchbook and replaced it with a sketchbook from Walmart, which had paper with the consistency of oatmeal and fishhooks. I finally got through it last week and have been enjoying drawing on regular paper again. It's like being able to breathe again, which is to say I do not recommend the sketchbooks from Walmart.



*To which you say "OF COURSE there is a different and more immediate tactile experience drawing on paper rather than digitally, Jesse." However, one of the most amazing things about drawing digitally (or at least on a Cintiq) is how natural and familiar it feels.

Spengler

2014 Mennoscah Shirt

For the last 7 years I've been fulfilling a childhood dream of designing the Camp Mennoscah shirts. Is dream too strong of a word? I'm not sure. I really loved those shirts growing up. Mennoscah is a small camp located next to nowhere in the middle of Kansas, and it's a wonderful place that holds a lot of great memories for me, and continues to be a place kids can go to get muddy, run around, see the stars, and live differently for a week.

Turtle Gurl

Turtle rider

A tale of two pirates

Recently I decided to make some new promotional materials and fondly remembered the boom box pirate (the second image) I did some time ago of which I was so proud. I opened up the file and experienced that wonderfully terrible my-insides-just-dried-up feeling you get when you see work you did some time ago. The drawing is stiff and out of proportion and dark and muddy and just not right. Belt buckles don't work like that, except on pilgrim hats, the scabbard is too long and the handle somehow comes over his coat and doesn't really read like a sword handle and the boom box nearly looks like an unfinished drawing of a boom box, but not quite. What time I didn't put into the boom box I obviously put into the background. I had been so proud of this image. I looked at the date on the file, and it's from February 2012, which seems like yesterday, but apparently was nearly two years ago.

Still, I liked the concept.

So I did it again, just now, started from scratch, and I'm very proud of it.

Here's the scary thing: what if I look back in 2016 and get that terrible feeling again?

And here's the Twilight Zone twist ending: what if I don't?

Merry Christmas