I guess I should say one of my high school nemeses. This guy was easier to draw than the others.
My high school in South Jersey was a nightmare—it included junior high, cramming grades 7 through 12 into one building. Wide-eyed kids fresh from grade school shared hallways with guys banging their girlfriends in customized vans. It was a disastrous mix.
In that era and eras since, STUPID equaled COOL. Everybody wanted to be Fonzie and nobody wanted to be Potsie. Picking on weaker kids wasn’t just bad behavior—it was a pastime, something to kill the stultifying boredom of hours at school.
When I hit 7th grade, I felt like a tiny mammal in the age of dinosaurs. I darted through corridors, praying the bigger predators wouldn’t notice or tread on me.
I did a six-year stretch there and hated every minute of it.
I’ve been working on notions of what the final scenes of my Teenage Beast story will be like, sketching ideas in my Pen+Gear Sketch Diary. As I have written before, that sketchbook is a gem as far as price and quality. The paper handles ink nicely, soaking it up without bleeding, much like the pricier mixed-media pads from Canson, Fabriano, or Strathmore. I drew the variation of the Teenage Beast’s final demonic form above, and the lines came out clean and bold. It has become my go-to for detailed work. Continue reading →
