Nice to know I didn’t even make it a month into my whole “I’m going to update once a week” thing. Not to make excuses, but it was purely because of my frantic completion of my sketchbook for the sketchbook project. It was due out Jan 31st, and I (just barely) made it. I was working on it up until the minute I left to run it to the post office.
I’m sure I mentioned it before, but my theme was “prehistoric”. I treated my sketchbook like spreads, and each spread had a different time period on it. In order:
- The singularity (before the big bang)
- The big bang (explosion, creation of stars, formation of rocks)
- Formation of the solar system
- The molten earth & newly created moon with sun and planets in the background
- Rain comes to the molten earth and forms bodies of water
- Molecules form in water and form DNA
- DNA begins to self replicate
- An ameoba-like cell ingests an organelle (Which is how it’s believed mitochondria entered cells. My drawing features an interpretation of a ribosome, a subtle nod to my husband’s research)
- The Cambrian explosion
- First amphibians on land
- Triassic period
- Jurassic period
- Cretaceous period
- Dinosaur solemnly watching the comet impact
- Rise of the mammals (featuring our dog, Gordon: Dinosaur’s Bane in the foreground in front of T. Rex bones happily gnawing away)
It also featured a pocket with a ton of business cards and some QR codes that will hopefully lead people to here, my portfolio site, or various social media outlets.
The sketchbook is a mix of woodless colored pencil and regular colored pencil. Which was, admittedly, not the media of choice for quick sketchbook work.
I realized about a week before it was due that I was only halfway completed. It was, in all ways, a hopeless mad dash to the finish. I had to abandon my original idea of sculpting the book to look like a dinosaur head due to time constraints. I ended up covering it with lime green scale-embossed paper, which works just as well.
My main regret is that my coloring was rushed in places and not my best work. But I feel like the sketchbook project is in a lot of ways like Nanowrimo, it’s not meant to be perfect, just an exercise in doing. I’m just happy that I finished!
Oh nos, Mr. dinosaur!
For those wanting to see the books, the tour begins in April. Full dates are here. My book is also being digitized, which I’ll link to once it happens. I had quite a few friends partaking in the sketchbook project and I’m excite to see everyone’s work when it comes to Atlanta in August.
crossposted from fuzzdecay.com.