Sketchbook: 2021-2022

Egg Sisters

Friends!

I have a million sketchbooks dating back decades and have been thinking I’d like to document and share some of the work in them, so that’s what I’m doing today. I chose one at random. It’s from 2021-2022.

This sketchbook is so nice. It’s made by Strathmore. It has a soft black cover and smooth cream-colored pages. Most of the drawings in it are done with a 0.37mm MUJI pen.

In 2021 I started a Patreon dedicated to a comic called Egg Sisters, and most of the art in this sketchbook is from that project. The gist of the story was this: two sisters want a cat but their mom refuses to get them one, so they head out into the wilderness to find one. Meanwhile, an insect named Oppy is having some sort of crisis. She is furious for reasons she doesn’t understand, and leaves her bewildered husband, Artur, in a mysterious fit of pique. I had no real plan for the story - I figured it would unfold as I drew it. I didn’t even know why Oppy was angry.

The sisters were repurposed from a much older idea and the insects were added to give the story another plot line and also to expand on the bug language of Du Iz Tak? - something I thought about a lot back then, and still think about now.

The Patreon was short-lived. For one thing, I don’t really like that platform. But the bigger issue was that I just spent too much on the comic. Each panel is a big drawing on a single page of this sketchbook.

After I drew them, I scanned them and pieced them together in Photoshop.

It was very slow going; not really conducive to the nimble stream-of-consciousness storytelling I was hoping to do. I fell into a kind of creative morass with it, abandoned the comic and the Patreon, and moved over here to start Slowpoke in its place. I love diving into big projects. I also love giving up on them and moving onto something new.

There are a few other things I like in this sketchbook.

Man, I was so into that MUJI pen. I should get back on that train.

If you know Astoria, Oregon, you probably know this house. I sat on the sidewalk across the street with my friend Alix Ryan and drew it in my sketchbook. This one is in pencil.

And, of course, you know the Astoria-Megler Bridge.

During this time there was an exhibition of Tudor art at the Met and I got the catalogue as a gift. I was especially into this portrait of the miniaturist and calligrapher Esther Inglis. I love her sly expression, the cards held close to her chest and, obviously, her hat.

By an unknown artist

I drew Esther a couple of times in this sketchbook with walnut ink and a nib pen. I actually cut this drawing out of the sketchbook - I’m sending it to NYC for a show:

But this inky one is still in there:

In Other News

I’m thrilled to announce that I designed a mural for the kids room of the newly renovated St. Johns Library in Portland! The library is reopening in a couple of weeks. There’ll be a ribbon cutting on the morning of Saturday the 27th and I’ll be there at 12:30, reading books to kids and hanging out. I don’t know if I’m allowed to show pictures of the mural yet, so you’ll just have to come by and see it for yourself. (Or wait until it’s open to the public, at which point I’ll share lots of photos here.)

Also, I’m not teaching workshops in July or August but I’ll be announcing some for the fall in the next month or two. As always, paid subscribers will get a heads up on early enrollment.