I continue to end my evenings on the couch with a cheap sketchbook and various pencils and erasers spread out on my lap half-watching the television usually tuned to trash. The Out of This World sketchbook continues to work its magic as I flesh out a story that has been knocking around my noggin for a number of years. In the past I’ve tried to formally get the bits and pieces of this supernatural story down on paper by jotting down notes onto easily misplaced index cards or starting outlines in various composition books and never finishing them. Writing is sort of a slog for me whereas fleshing out scenes via drawings in a cheap but magical scratch pad is a lot easier.
I don’t know where any of this is going or if it will ever arrive anywhere, but I am having a good time attacking the pages with Mitsubishi 2mm red leads and a number of graphite pencils in various grades.
After The Howling and American Werewolf in London came out, I’ve had that design where the creature is more wolf than man stuck in my head. That was what a wolf-man was supposed to look like! After watching a bunch of Paul Naschy El Hombre Lobo movies along with the classic I Was a Teenage Werewolf which features my absolute favorite werewolf design, I’ve changed my mind. I am leaning towards my monster being more man than lupine. I think of it in terms of a makeup werewolf rather than an animatronic monster operated by a team of puppeteers. Then I have a notion of the mannish version is a stage, and maybe the werewolf with a snout is a more advanced stage of the curse of lycanthropy. I don’t know. I’m just going where my pencil leads me. I’m having fun. That’s all I’m really aiming to do.
