So I've just finished a sketchbook. Funny thing is that after years and years of filling them with drawings I usually look back on in embarrassment (they also tend to be about a third of their original weight by the end due to me tearing pages out), I've only just now seriously realized that within a year I won't remember what segment of my life this particular one oversaw, no matter how memorable I think it might be right now. Part of why that's especially significant at the moment is that the majority of the most memorable and best drawings done on those pages were taken out either to trace and complete outside the book or were offered up to my muse Katrina as small gifts.
Thus I'm writing this as some kind of combined eulogy/time capsule to commemorate what happened within and without the pages of this particular sketchbook.
I originally bought this sketchbook back in March on a lazy day hanging out with Dylan and Claudia at The House coffee shop in Kensington along with a couple pencils and a new eraser, but I went back a few minutes later ready to take a fresh dive into my art, hoping that a nearly obscene investment of money into it would make it my first real successful attempt at starting a regular and lasting commitment to my development as an artist towards some kind of career. For reasons that wouldn't become apparent until much later, I was right. On my second trip that day, I spent over three hundred dollars securing the biggest set of prisma markers available and complimenting them with a set of grayscale ones. I then proceeded to go back to the coffee shop and bang out a ludicrously successful Catwoman drawing for that period of my art without any kind of photo reference. It also ended a nine month long drought of posting to DeviantART.
The original idea was to bang out a string of marker drawings that would prove (to myself) my ability to hold down a table at a comic convention, which I essentially did.
From there is a fairly linear chart of my growing passion for tattoo art which of course largely coincided with my decision to finally join Suicide Girls, which inspired the boundary pushing Sex Ampersand Drugs, that became a central piece in the sketchbook and my progress because I took it as an opportunity to push myself into new territory in anatomy, attitude, and practically any design challenge I'd shied away from until that point.
By the time Inkubus had been drawn, the decision to become a tattoo artist had been made. A revised edition of it will likely grace the cover of my first book of flash, which I plan to complete and make available for sale within a month, as it was originally conceptualized as being the cover to my tattoo portfolio. Katrina says I ought to get it done when I reach my five year mark as a working tattoo artist, but if I do it'll be a heavily revised version. Within two weeks of completing the pencils for Inkubus, I had my first tattoo, which was also the day I met Katrina. I don't believe in destiny, but I do believe in sentient forces in the universe that like to alter the chain of causality for their own ends. Clearly something or someone other than Katrina and I wanted us to meet that day, as I think the events that unfolded after that show.
I've made a relatively big deal- tongue firmly in cheek- about there being this clear demarcation between before meeting Katrina and afterwards in my sketchbook, but it took on a bit of a slow burn, first really manifesting it in a relentlessly reconsidered and revised Catwoman drawing for her (which to this date is still not complete but will be inked and completed very soon). The experience of designing her tribal piece and watching it get done was extremely formative and actually saw the final revamping of the Catwoman pencils.
Beyond that, it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could become a tattoo artist and succeed at it. Talking to the other artists at the shop and soliciting feedback and advice was a great experience for me that really made it possible to carry me through to the point I'm at now; the very cusp of the beginning of my real career in tattooing. From there I dove into tattoo art with a vengeance, producing the best art I've ever done and pushing me to experiment in new ways with mediums I hadn't touched in years. I'll likely be uploading and archiving several pages of sketches from in between the major pieces sometime soon.
This sketchbook is finally being retired at the end of my first week here in Vancouver, which I think is a blaze of glory.
Thus I'm writing this as some kind of combined eulogy/time capsule to commemorate what happened within and without the pages of this particular sketchbook.
I originally bought this sketchbook back in March on a lazy day hanging out with Dylan and Claudia at The House coffee shop in Kensington along with a couple pencils and a new eraser, but I went back a few minutes later ready to take a fresh dive into my art, hoping that a nearly obscene investment of money into it would make it my first real successful attempt at starting a regular and lasting commitment to my development as an artist towards some kind of career. For reasons that wouldn't become apparent until much later, I was right. On my second trip that day, I spent over three hundred dollars securing the biggest set of prisma markers available and complimenting them with a set of grayscale ones. I then proceeded to go back to the coffee shop and bang out a ludicrously successful Catwoman drawing for that period of my art without any kind of photo reference. It also ended a nine month long drought of posting to DeviantART.
The original idea was to bang out a string of marker drawings that would prove (to myself) my ability to hold down a table at a comic convention, which I essentially did.
From there is a fairly linear chart of my growing passion for tattoo art which of course largely coincided with my decision to finally join Suicide Girls, which inspired the boundary pushing Sex Ampersand Drugs, that became a central piece in the sketchbook and my progress because I took it as an opportunity to push myself into new territory in anatomy, attitude, and practically any design challenge I'd shied away from until that point.
By the time Inkubus had been drawn, the decision to become a tattoo artist had been made. A revised edition of it will likely grace the cover of my first book of flash, which I plan to complete and make available for sale within a month, as it was originally conceptualized as being the cover to my tattoo portfolio. Katrina says I ought to get it done when I reach my five year mark as a working tattoo artist, but if I do it'll be a heavily revised version. Within two weeks of completing the pencils for Inkubus, I had my first tattoo, which was also the day I met Katrina. I don't believe in destiny, but I do believe in sentient forces in the universe that like to alter the chain of causality for their own ends. Clearly something or someone other than Katrina and I wanted us to meet that day, as I think the events that unfolded after that show.
I've made a relatively big deal- tongue firmly in cheek- about there being this clear demarcation between before meeting Katrina and afterwards in my sketchbook, but it took on a bit of a slow burn, first really manifesting it in a relentlessly reconsidered and revised Catwoman drawing for her (which to this date is still not complete but will be inked and completed very soon). The experience of designing her tribal piece and watching it get done was extremely formative and actually saw the final revamping of the Catwoman pencils.
Beyond that, it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could become a tattoo artist and succeed at it. Talking to the other artists at the shop and soliciting feedback and advice was a great experience for me that really made it possible to carry me through to the point I'm at now; the very cusp of the beginning of my real career in tattooing. From there I dove into tattoo art with a vengeance, producing the best art I've ever done and pushing me to experiment in new ways with mediums I hadn't touched in years. I'll likely be uploading and archiving several pages of sketches from in between the major pieces sometime soon.
This sketchbook is finally being retired at the end of my first week here in Vancouver, which I think is a blaze of glory.