SKETCHBOOKS: moleskine 001

I abandoned the cartoony knights in the previous pages of the sketchbook and let things sit for a while. Eventually, a new approach suggested itself to me and I got started with a very different kind of re-imagining of these knights. Influenced by some street art (I write "some" because in general I have a fairly dim view of street art and, even moreso, the bizarre cult-like adoration that seems to revere the whole idea), plastic toys from my own childhood, and a strange sense of stuckness or immobility. These knights, rather than being men of action and brutal fighters were instead still, limbless figures locked into mental battles with self-doubt and uncertainty.

So, this is the first one. He remained nameless although I often thought of him as a Fisher King. I will someday revisit this and include, well...some fish. I can see it very clearly, actually. And, as strange as this may seem to you, this is also a kind of self-portrait. Which explains the eyes. The stuckness. The echoes of my Queequeg.

To the left, a list of projects that I, at one point, had every intention of exploring. While I will reluctantly admit to being embarrassingly fickle and chaotic, this time it truly is because I have changed quite a bit since initially conceiving of them. Of this list, the only ones I can imagine actually being completed at some point in the future are the Heart of Darkness illustrations, some kind of visual exploration of A Voyage to Arcturus, Pilgrim (which will be a longer comic or perhaps a graphic novel), and probably the Laser Brigade comic which I promised to a friend.

So there you have it. A window into my thoughts.

Oh, yeah, you will often be able to see the dates of these sketches and writing very clearly somewhere in the image. I'm trying to be very consistent about that. In case you were wondering though, these pages are from late May of this year.