After finally putting the Sketchbook from Hell to rest by feverishly sketching in it on my commute, I set my sights on another sketchbook that was begging to be finished off.
I bought this hardbound sketchbook back in the Summer of 2007 from the store that is imprinted on it’s cover. I’m not crazy about this type of book being that it doesn’t lay flat and is tough to scan. It must have been on sale. I have done decent drawings in this sort of book unlike the paperback Sketchbook from Hell. They are not necessarily comfortable to sketch in and that’s why they languish in my studio unused.
July 16, 2007 – October 3, 2012
This one took five years to kill. I took it with me back and forth to work and finished it on the Market-Frankford El.
The sketch at the top was done in red and blue mechanical pencil with a fine Pigma pen over top. It’s a notion I have about Dr. Frankenstein and the mad scientists that follow his work into the rest of the nineteenth century. I daydream about how somebody would pick up on Frankenstein’s work and try to better it. This guy is held together with braces until his incisions heal and his bones stitch. I wondered what the braces would be made out of back when the son or grandson of Frankenstein toiled away. Would he get a blacksmith to hammer them into shape? Have somebody carve the collar out of ivory? Crafted from wood?
I also try to imagine what the creature or a creature would look like if Boris Karloff never shambled around under a ton of makeup. There’s no escaping that iconic image, but how would it be approached if it never existed? These notions ricochet around my brain and work their way out through the end of my pencil.
