Watercolor illustrations from the song by T. Rex (and the cover by Bauhaus)
Hello all!! Happy Summer!
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I’m quite happy to finally be officially working on this project. I write and draw and refine and and write again, draw again, refine again, repeat–with every story. This story however began in September of 2009. So from pen to publication, about 2 and 1/2 years will have elapsed. So much of my life has happened in those 30 months. Travels, deaths, changes and a masters degree. The biggest and best change, Oliver is here now. So this will be the first book that I’ll be working on with him in my life and the first book that will come out, for him to see. What I’ve written in Mole Had Everything–I hope he can use for his whole life. I hope he can use it as a child and as a man. I don’t want to get too deep into it and I may never tell him. If he finds it–I’ll show him this blog…perhaps. Now, onto some of the rough page layouts: 
(Above) character sketches that I turned in last week. Typed in a few notes for Elliot and Cecile at Blue Apple Books(my partners in this caper) 
Four concept sketches for the cover. The bottom right made the cut. Top right was offered as a tribute to good pal Tim Decker. 
The complications of a simple life. Taking night walks in the forest with a cup of tea and sitting on top of a rock to think. 
Pages 4-5 redo. Trying to take away a bit of clutter from a story that has to show lots of clutter. The composition is opening up, hopefully giving the book a rhythm. 
Pages 24-25. We all have this stuff. 
THE GATEFOLD. This will be a double page spread that also folds down to show the protagonist trying to cram his home with all of his new stuff. Split the page horizontally at the mid point and that is what you’ll see when you open the book. A flap will extend down from that to reveal everything happening below. Lots of work in this one! 
Lastly(for now). The scene in the story when our wee lad is trying to get on with his life but realizes that all of his possessions are possessing him. More to come,words to fix, add paint, rinse and repeat. Eat that Tim–I blogged!
Anyway, here’s a small drawing I did for a friend. I was asked to “draw a portrait” of her with “a unicorn horn, in a balloon sailing over a field of poppies”… I fear my need to be all literal gets the better of me at times, tried to tweak it a bit… 
It’s 6×7 inches…
[A note to begin: the pun in the title took me all day to come up with.] Anyway, I suppose someone should post something on this site to keep the cobwebs from forming. I’ve been practicing watercolor, trying to ease off the overworking and hatching. It seems as though–if this keeps up–I may have to change the name of the site. Maybe something like “people who draw with stuff.”
For whatever reason, I’ve started drawing new pictures set in the trenches of The Great War. And I keep thinking, “Man, if only I could redraw my first book, it would look so much cooler… Oh well.”
And this is what you get when you spend an entire day looking at Rembrandt’s The Nightwatch. I really need a hobby.
And finally–We are have the beginnings of the next in the Stickfiguratively Speaking series. THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW! I’m not gonna post too many here–just a glimpse. But I am gonna do a Timothy Decker(ish) blog post and be very verbose.
The Title page as it stands now. I’ll need to do a bit more inking on this piece before I consider it finished. Also, the layout of the type will most likely change(as I am not designing this book–just drawing and writing the occasional bit).
So how am I making these illustrations, you ask? They are all pen and ink on bristol. All about 10″x20″ so they have become a bit of a monster in my life…lots of inky evenings and sleepless, inky nights. Closely followed by inky mornings.
Then comes the part that is not so fun…but much less inky. The images are scanned and then I take them into photoshop to block out the background black areas. My current idea is to at least have every section where the Headless Horseman is illustrated to be a night scene like these. Also, keep in mind that these images are not displayed in order–so the if you’re reading the words, it probably won’t make sense.
This is an example of a daytime scene. That lanky schoolmaster from Connecticut, lurching through a cornfield reading the books of Cotton Mather. I think that reading Mather was basically his version of watching a horror film by yourself. You do it because you kind of want to have that feeling in the back of your mind that everything you just saw could possibly be real. This is Ichabod Crane–a superstitions man living in a VERY superstitious time.
I just like how this one came out.
Lastly for today’s post–Many thanks to Rob at Washington Irving’s Sunnyside estate in Sleepy Hollow(or Irvington or Tarrytown) for providing me with reference pictures and letting me romp around the grounds taking pictures this past summer. It really allowed me to keep my head…heh.
After 10 long years, I have some watercolors. And there’s a chance that I’ll have a project upon which to employ them… Maybe. So… Basically, I’m just drawing and painting trees and skies. Good times, good times.
Here’s the sketch for the second picture in this series. The last four or so hours of this were beyond painful.
This took way too long to do; probably the most crosshatching I’ve done on a single picture to date. It started out with the goal of simplicity, but MAGICALLY turned into overworked nonsense once again. However, as I’ve done this picture about five times now, I think this is good enough for the time being. Nevermind the colors–getting a decent scan of watercolors is pretty much impossible (top is discolored due to wavy paper). Click for bigger. Oh, the second is a portrait of me after finishing this. Very high-resolution scan (1.5mb)
