Sketchbook No. 1

The beginning. Sort of.

Penelope Dullaghan, an illustrator I admire (for her work, her online and ongoing festival celebrating illustration, her frighteningly intense self confidence and foresight, and her ability to get publicity) said in a design magazine interview last year that she threw away all her old sketches and sketchbooks.

The interviewer was aghast. So was I. Her point is that she wants to be new and not informed by what she did before; this is part, perhaps, of that frightening self confidence. To me, the idea itself is plain frightening.

I can't part with my sketchbooks because:

Legless Bill Russell. Handless whomever.

1. They're among the few things in my life that represent order. They keep my ideas bound, literally, and at least once per century they are in chronological order.

2. They are my ideas made manifest.

3. They're documentation of visual experiments that served no purpose at the time, but held the DNA for something later; in case that something comes along, I'll be ready.

4. I can remember where I was and what I was heard and smelled with every single illustration.

In so many ways, I ain't Penelope Dullaghan. Which is probably plain. Least of which is tossing my sketches.

Forced to rearrange a bunch of stuff in my office recently, I came across what is probably my very first sketchbook. Though  I'd sketched and doodled long before, even drawing portraits for "pay" (some kind of reward, usually edible), this is the first time I collected drawings in once place: Grumbacher's big drawing paper pad. Aimed at for the kid market, no doubt. I mean, I bought it (or it was purchased for me).

The dates indicate it took more than three years to complete this pad (from eighth grade up through my sophomore year in high school), which is a charitable description because I let several pages go wasted with nary a scribble. Back then, I had no inclination as an illustrator; I was going to be a newspaper reporter. Now I finish a sketchbook in three months and try to fill up every page. I like Strathmore coil-bound drawing pads, if anyone cares (and even if nobody cares; hey, maybe I should post this factoid on facebook!)

Notice how I title it, charitably, "Tiger."

First impressions? An adult would not have been out of line in telling me that whatever my day job was going to be, make sure it's not illustration. But no one did. In fact, I'll always remember that when I showed my Aunt Patti this drawing of a snarling tiger 35 years ago (hadda have been taken from a photo), she was thrilled.

Of course, that's the kind of thing aunts are supposed to say, and Aunt Patti has always been really great at in that part of her job

But she could easily have dismissed it too, or made mild passing affirmation. But she loved it, and I often think of that moment and how it made me keep at it.

Words and how we convey them have awesome power. It's easy to forget.

Words inspired me to this caricature of my freshman football coach, Mr. Hutchison. I distinctly remember that this was the start of a comic strip that never got past this, an absurdist comment on high school football, which was the most disorienting time of my high school life. (Football also disoriented my bone from ligament and muscle, bad knees ending my career before the first season began.) The "Bingle" in this scene was my best friend John from high school, who finished the season.

Other characters were going to include Assistant Coach Villanueva, who liked to greet us each practice with, "Girls, who got to squat to pee!" and would encourage us by yelling, "I'm going to make you run 'til the sun go down! I'm going to make you run so your tongue falls outta your mouth! You're going to run 'til you puke all over the grass!" Good times. By the way, you can tell I picked up some books on how to draw cartoon hands, but now how to draw anything else.

Unfinished, for a girl I wanted to date.

Some treasures (for me, anyway) still exist, but I'll save them for another time. Right now, the sketchbook feels more like Pandora's Box than a trove, full of unfinished drawings and agonizingly empty pages. I've got a big case of the shoulda-woulda-couldas, and it's time for me to attend to something else at the moment.

Still, some of it gives me pleasure (besides those which just make me laugh with embarrassment). The sketch to the right makes me remember how heavily the kings of illustration at the time (Bernard Fuchs, Robert Giusti and Mark English foremost) influenced me. The shadow across the plane of cheekbones and lips almost makes it look like I know what I'm doing; I think it's more a mishap of the scanner.