Time for a Sketchrospective!
Hi everyone! How’s it going?
of how much of our society is a total farce, and how all of our lives are hollow, and how even our speech is reduced to nothingness.
Okay, edgelord. Anyway…
I know for many of you your favorite part of my blog my drawing deep dives, so I thought I’d do a little bit of that this week. On today’s menu we have:
My week in St. Louis
A pocket sketchrospective
Bonus Manga
A Week in St. Louis
12/16/2024
My Mom has recently gotten into making decorative utensils by wrapping them with wire and beads. Here’s a drawing of her holding a spoon-in-progress, Auntie Debbie reading the beads, Alex crocheting, and of course, me drawing them. I tried to apply some rendering techniques from a Peter Mullen study you’ll see in a bit.
12/17/2024
Alex and I visited the St. Louis Art Museum, where they had a visiting exhibit of works funded by the Federal Arts Project. The FAP was a part of the New Deal that ran from 1935–1943 and created hundreds of community art centers across the country supporting artists who were looking for work. One of the results of this program was the following series of paintings by children at one of the Memphis center’s free art classes in 1938.
I love how these kids really capture the joy of putting color on the page. I can only imagine how much fun it must have been to be in this class.
12/18/2024
I thrifted some new pants and tried on some glasses. One of my Dad’s coworkers won a small lottery and gave him a chunk of it, so we went out for sushi.
Peep that guy in the back. He was pretty fun to watch.
12/19/2024
I went to the dentist. I also drew Mrs. Gyawali’s cat from our visit delivering decorative spoons.
12/20/2024
John Crane Madden IV and I had for both of us our best visit to the St. Louis Zoo ever! The feels like was 14°F, which was pretty cold. However, we got to see the tigers, penguins, polar bear, pelicans, and even the hellbender getting fed! And I got to do lots of great eavesdropping, which I always enjoy. I wasn’t super stoked about my drawing of the takins, but I guess my fingers were a little cold. The takin have this cool enclosure where there’s a fake mountain range in the middle for them to climb over.
I also took a crack at a penguin dragon. I’m a little prejudiced and think dragons should be fearsome predators instead of goofy little guys, but I guess there can be room for silly dragons too. My note reads, “Snow dragon… penguin & polar bear? Dragons should be magical and change the world around them.”
12/21/2024
Shabbat, so no drawing for me.
12/22/2024
I went over to Caleb’s and we played some Photo Roulette, which I happened to be extremely cracked at. Also Caleb’s cat crawled across my drawing while I drew it, which was an interestingly mind-bending experience. Usually my subjects don’t step on my drawings while I’m drawing them.
I still feel like I have no idea how to draw cats. In between Ethan and Gian I’m trying to figure out what a cartoon cat should look like. This drawing was also a last-ditch effort to boost Ethan in the Draw-U-Larity Poll, but I didn’t record it until after 2025 started. Sorry, Ethan!
Pocket Sketchrospective
When I finish a sketchbook, I like to do a retrospective of the book’s best images. This sketchbook was a piece of folded newsprint, so I can actually just show you the whole thing in one picture!
This sketchbook started because I wanted to have something to draw on anywhere, anytime. Newsprint isn’t the most resilient paper on the planet, but its thinness means it folds up easier than sturdier drawing papers. Anyway, while I was in St. Louis I saw a really interesting book that integrated text into the drawings. Here’s my attempt at emulating some of that from memory. ↓
And here’s another quick life drawing from the decks of the Queen Mary. ↓
And a slightly longer one from our play of Ginkgopolis. I did that thing I always do and ran out of room, which was a great excuse to draw Will super big in the back. I think if I had recorded this image last year, Shmuel might have tied Alex in the Draw-U-Larity poll. ↓
The last life drawing from this sketchbook is of one of the libraries in Long Beach. I also learned about a library in Kansas City that has a movie theater inside a bank vault in the basement, so I drew that in the background. Below are some notes on The Contradiction, an attempt to reconcile the meeting of LAW and CHAOS on the mortal plane. Basically I’m a little tired of LAW always being the good guys in fantasy when in reality the LAW is evil as well.1 ↓
I also took some iconography from a landline and turned it into a font. The text reads “I should really be doing bespoke fonts.” ↓
This was prompted by my study of Kyle Ferrin’s cover for the board game Fort. I haven’t played the game, but I really love Ferrin as an illustrator. Particularly I’ve been looking to him for ways to draw people. I’ll probably do a bigger, full color version of this sometime soon. ↓
Here’s another study, this one of Mike Mignola’s cover of his comic Hellboy: Conqueror Worm. Mignola is still basically a wizard to me, but I think I’m getting a better understanding of how he draws now that I’m reading Hellboy front to back. I’ll probably be doing more studies of him soon as well. ↓
I’ve had the goal for a while now to start making some cool shirts. I don’t really know how to sew or anything but I’m hoping my drawing skills can transfer a little bit to embroidering and making appliques. Here are some shirt ideas I sketched out. ↓
This next chunk has some notes I took on the right about Justin Alexander’s posts on the three clue rule and node-based design two frameworks for structuring RPG scenarios. The basic idea is that since the players should be able to choose what happens next, the game’s plot should allow for significant choices in direction. Of course, the real question is how to do this without pulling your hair out. On the left is an idea I had for an encounter with HSSKSSKSSKSS, the god of snakes. ↓
In my opinion the crowning jewel of this sketchbook was the following study of an illustration by Peter Mullen in Dungeon Crawl Classics. ↓
You can probably see why Mullen has quickly become one of my favorite illustrators in pen and ink. The amount I learned while studying this piece, the time put in, and the quality of the result all make this a huge win for me. I’ll probably do a bigger copy sometime so I can have it on better paper. ↓
And that’s a wrap! Thanks everyone for reading, and I’ll see you next week. Bye!
BONUS MANGA
I still don’t really know what to do with “good” and “evil” since both are so subjective. And since most PCs would be considered evil in the real world, or at least so chaotic to the point of approaching evil, I don’t really see how you could honestly use any moral framework for very long. At the same time, I have no idea how make righteousness as a colonial element some sort of game mechanic. If everyone is evil, then is evil also evil? Or is evil actually good? Does it feel good to be evil, or does it feel evil to be good?
I am so glad your Mom told me to follow you. Reading this has made my day. You are an inspiration - can't tell you when was the last time I sketched, but you make my fingers want to grab a pen!