Twice Dozen
Not a baker’s dozen, because that would make 26. Inkbeard post #24
This Week
This week I added to the old sketchbook, which is actually a new sketchbook from Hobby Lobby. Not a new new one, but that one I wrote about a few posts ago. I am not hoarding or stashing sketchbooks for the paper-apocalypse (paperpocalypse), just in case you were wondering. But not that you were wondering.
The first day of spring was only a couple days ago, officially, and I have to say that up here in Minnesota I have not noticed a definite change. The ground is still as brown and unimpressive as in February, and there is still no snow. It is windier, though.
The Art
Last Friday my girlfriend was busy babysitting for the evening, so I plopped down in my room and doodled for a while. The drawing was inspired by the book The Red Winter by Henry H. Neff, the fifth book in the Tapestry series, also by the Wizards of Once by Cressida Cowell. The idea of a wandering hero of humble origins and mighty prowess battling feathery witches is one I intend to extort via a short story sometime in the future.
For the line art, I sketched in a 2H pencil the basic shape, and then took a cheep .5 ink pen and went over the sketch. For the which, I took a bottle of ink I have laying in my desk drawer for calligraphy and with a paintbrush created a shadowy, be-feathered horror I call a witch, inspired by the monsters from Wizards of Once. For the color, I used a combination of Alcohol markers and colored pencils, and I was apathetic about the outcome. The markers don’t fully bleed through the thick paper, but you can still see hints of color on the opposite side. And the contrast of texture and saturation between the markers and pencils I found uninspiring.
In the background I wrote the basic story idea for this character I call Benjamin the Hunter, which I used to push the nautical early 20th century explorer aesthetic. The final picture is pretty decent, and I am happy with how it turned out.
Mushrooms.
This is the third idea which I am writing about. The first was about the weather, a topic talked to death about, and the second dove too deep and personal to warrant exposition on a large scale. So I thought to myself, I’ll write about the first thing that pops into my head, which happened to be my sister’s fascination with fungi. Once, during my stint as a college student, I was required to write a short story. The first idea was more like a short book, with chapters and all, so I ditched that for a simpler idea. The final result was a short story following two mushroom hunters looking for a rare type of coral mushroom which only grows in upstate Minnesota. The story is so-so, but I did learn a little about the mushrooming world.
Too-da-loo
And there we come again to the end of another post, and the beginning of a new week. I am sure the exposition above provided you with five minutes of entertainment. Go forth, therefore, into the new day with high spirits for whatever may come your way. Farewell until next week.
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