{"id":21724,"date":"2017-02-23T07:04:07","date_gmt":"2017-02-23T12:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/?p=21724"},"modified":"2021-07-29T16:16:33","modified_gmt":"2021-07-29T20:16:33","slug":"the-sketchbook-from-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2017\/02\/23\/the-sketchbook-from-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sketchbook from Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the past I have written about sketchbooks I have bought that seemed like a good idea at the point of purchase but failed miserably when put into practice. Either the sketchbooks looked handsome on the shelf and proved unwieldy in use or for unknown and possibly diabolical reasons they simply refused whatever artistic attempt I would make. I refer to these sketchbooks as the Sketchbooks from Hell<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today, I offer you, dear readers<\/em>, the Sketchbook that very well may be from Heaven.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Cheap
\nI can’t take credit for having discovered it. I received it as a Christmas gift from my wife. She bought it at Target.<\/em> If I had seen it, I probably wouldn’t have taken it seriously being that it wasn’t on the shelves of an art supply shop and it was aimed at children. It measures 6-inches by 8.75-inches and is wire-bound. It has a thick, cardboard cover that the manufacturer or distributor invites children to “decorate themselves”<\/em> but the coated cover resists every media I’ve thrown at it. Even permanent markers wipe right off as if it were a dry-erase board. I’ve opted to encrust it with stickers as I come across them.<\/p>\n

My second order with Jet Pens<\/p><\/div>\n

The paper is nice. Bright white. Wet media wrinkles the pages which I expected, but unlike the more expensive and better known Strathmore<\/em> sketchbooks it doesn’t bleed. Is the paper archival? I don’t know, and I don’t really care. The archival tag adds a special layer of preciousness to the whole process of getting the ideas out of the brain and onto the paper. Gosh, will this be the scribble I’ll be remembered for?<\/em> Who cares? Make your dirty little marks!<\/p>\n

I’m about 50 pages in, and I’m happy with the drawings I’m drawing. I keep it close at hand. It begs to be drawn in.\u00a0 Maybe it’s the new tools I’ve been buying from Jet Pens<\/a>.<\/em> Everyone has heard the adage that a poor craftsman blames the quality of his work upon his tools,<\/em> but what about the guy who applauds his tools?<\/em> Jet Pens<\/em> has<\/strong> the goods, and if they had a physical store near me, I would probably loiter there until someone summoned security.<\/p>\n

So what am I sketching?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"I usually go where my pencil takes me drawing mostly from my memory or imagination. I know I should draw from still lives or life more, but drawing still life subjects always bored me and drawing from life on the subway is going to get me killed.<\/em> If I see an interesting person, I may scribble down notes of all the details that made the person stand out to me and work up the rest from those notes and memory. Otherwise, I draw creatures or cartoons or whatever comes out of the pencil. Recently, I\u2019ve been sketching a character<\/a> I cooked up a couple of years ago as a Halloween costume for my son.<\/a> I\u2019ve been sketching this character in action poses and throwing together opponents he could face off against. As I sketched, a cast of characters and a scenario started to emerge from those cheap pages. Now if I could just keep it simple and not kill it with too much backstory, I may wind up with a short comic done in this style. At least, that\u2019s what I\u2019m aiming to do. I\u2019d like to wind up with an 8-page comic done in the style of the Marvel or Warren black-and-white, magazine format comics that came out in the \u201870s. If that turns out to be fun, I’ll move onward from there.<\/p>\n

The fellow above is a forager<\/em> in a post-apocalyptic world and is based on a guy I used to work with, but it ended up looking more like Dustin Hoffman. That’s all right. I drew him on the Market-Frankford line heading into the 69th Street station.<\/p>\n

What good is a post apocalypse<\/em> without mutants?<\/em>\"\"It<\/strong> is Pink Zeppelin.<\/em> I\u2019m not sure why he is. I was wallowing in my high school years as I\u2019ve probably been doing for the past few decades. Back in the era when entertainment choices were slim and FM radio and record albums dominated life itself, high school kids lived for the big rock concerts they saw at one of the arenas in nearby Philadelphia. Jeans and black concert tee-shirts were the de facto<\/em> high school uniform. My school in South Jersey seemed evenly divided between Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd zealots. They were like two mostly compatible branches of a religious cult, but woe be the man who admitted to liking disco or punk. With that in mind this mutant-monster came out of the pencil. It<\/strong> <\/em>was the result of a botched scientific experiment that melded a rabid, high school-aged Zeppelin<\/em> fan circa 1979 with a rabid, high-school-aged Floyd<\/em> fan also from the same era. Maybe they were at a laser light show when the bomb dropped; were welded together by the blast and somehow survived. However it came to be, it is a two-headed freak who probably misspelled the word zeppelin<\/em> more than once on a high school art project. It beats a generic, scaly, hulking monster that I was probably going to do.<\/p>\n

The Sketchbook from Heaven<\/em> just gives and gives. It’s fun to draw in and as I do, the ideas keep bubbling up from it’s pages. I have to make sure to buy a few more. Perhaps soon because they may not be around forever!<\/p>\n

\"First <\/a>
First drawing of Pink Zeppelin. He just sort of rolled out of a blue Derwent pencil <\/div> <\/div>
\"With <\/a>
With this drawing, I thought COMIC! <\/div> <\/div>
\"You, <\/a>
You, yeah, you! Stand still, laddy! <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Every <\/a>
Every Kid from High School <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Atomic <\/a>
Atomic Warrior lights up the joint <\/div> <\/div>
\"Which <\/a>
Which one is Pink? <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"In <\/a>
In New Jersey after the Apocalypse <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

Stay tuned for more.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the past I have written about sketchbooks I have bought that seemed like a good idea at the point of purchase but failed miserably when put into practice. Either the sketchbooks looked handsome on the shelf and proved unwieldy … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":21726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[49],"tags":[233,33,274,17,8,312,726,9,4068,907,4046,5,23,122,3669,195,3663,25,480],"class_list":["post-21724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-it-came-from-the-sketchbook","tag-1970s","tag-1980s","tag-art","tag-cartoon","tag-cartoons","tag-comic","tag-comic-book","tag-comics","tag-doodles","tag-drawing","tag-jet-pens","tag-joe-williams","tag-monster","tag-new-jersey","tag-philadelphia","tag-science-fiction","tag-sketch","tag-sketchbook","tag-usa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1ed1x-5Eo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":41106,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2023\/08\/02\/the-little-sketchbooks\/","url_meta":{"origin":21724,"position":0},"title":"The Little Sketchbooks","author":"Joe","date":"August 2, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week I was going to gather my collection of little sketchbooks that I have been keeping since 2017. I have always kept sketchbooks, but my fascination for the small ones started when my wife snagged me the original Sketchbook from Heaven from a Target store as a gift for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "It Came From the Sketchbook"","block_context":{"text":"It Came From the Sketchbook","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/it-came-from-the-sketchbook\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/001.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/001.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/001.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":41044,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2023\/07\/27\/more-little-sketchbooks-than-i-thought\/","url_meta":{"origin":21724,"position":1},"title":"More Little Sketchbooks Than I Thought…","author":"Joe","date":"July 27, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"I originally thought this was going to be a simple short post where I would gather all of the small, mainly inexpensive sketchbooks I've been doodling in; line them all up and shoot pictures of their sticker encrusted covers. How many could there be stretching back to The Sketchbook from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "It Came From the Sketchbook"","block_context":{"text":"It Came From the Sketchbook","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/it-came-from-the-sketchbook\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/inked-pink-zeppelin.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":45103,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2025\/05\/13\/tiptoe-through-the-sketchbooks\/","url_meta":{"origin":21724,"position":2},"title":"Tiptoe through the Sketchbooks","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"May 13, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Having finished up the Canson XL Mixed Media Sketchbook, I am working here and there in a few different sketchbooks. The subject is still The Teenage Beast. As far as discount sketchbooks, the Ucreate sketchbook from Ticonderoga is a pretty decent pad of paper. I like how it takes inks.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Doodle Tuesday"","block_context":{"text":"Doodle Tuesday","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/it-came-from-the-sketchbook\/doodle-tuesday\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/detail-Coming-Through-Part-Two.jpg?fit=640%2C427&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/detail-Coming-Through-Part-Two.jpg?fit=640%2C427&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/detail-Coming-Through-Part-Two.jpg?fit=640%2C427&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":40314,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2023\/03\/28\/arrivederci-sketchbook\/","url_meta":{"origin":21724,"position":3},"title":"Arrivederci Sketchbook","author":"Joe","date":"March 28, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Out of This World Sketch Pad October 17, 2022 - March 26, 2023 I have put to rest what is probably the last of the novelty sketchpads distributed by the Horizon Group USA to Target stores. At least it was the last that I had, and I haven't been able\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Doodle Tuesday"","block_context":{"text":"Doodle Tuesday","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/it-came-from-the-sketchbook\/doodle-tuesday\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/I-eat-a-lot-of-Oranges.jpg?fit=640%2C424&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/I-eat-a-lot-of-Oranges.jpg?fit=640%2C424&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/I-eat-a-lot-of-Oranges.jpg?fit=640%2C424&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":24433,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2018\/10\/02\/another-cheap-sketchbook-bites-the-dust\/","url_meta":{"origin":21724,"position":4},"title":"Another Cheap Sketchbook Bites the Dust","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"October 2, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The Llama Sketchbook: December 27, 2017 to September 29, 2018 Well, at least there is a llama beneath the stickers. 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This wasn't quite as good as the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "It Came From the Sketchbook"","block_context":{"text":"It Came From the Sketchbook","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/it-came-from-the-sketchbook\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/heaven-2-electric-boogaloo.jpg?fit=640%2C421&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/heaven-2-electric-boogaloo.jpg?fit=640%2C421&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/heaven-2-electric-boogaloo.jpg?fit=640%2C421&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":24217,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2018\/08\/16\/dick-blick-licked\/","url_meta":{"origin":21724,"position":5},"title":"Dick Blick Licked","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"August 16, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I've put another sketchbook to rest. 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