Never throw anything away.

I am a “purger”. I like to toss things in the trash, recycle or donate to the local Goodwill. I don’t like clutter. If it hasn’t been used in a while I want to get rid of it. I do have one exception, well maybe two or three but for the purposes of this entry I will keep it to one exception. Sketchbooks. Oh sure I have lots of bad drawings and there may even be a sketchbook or two that I would like to toss because they contain some really embarrassing drawings. When I look back at some of the things I was drawing 10+ years ago I get shivers. Why do I still keep them?

In the last post I mentioned outlining two new stories and working on character studies. The new stories will be assembled as graphic novels. As I was organizing the stories I knew that there would be three main characters but my illustration styling wouldn’t necessarily fit this format. I needed to create a new styling that would better fit a graphic novel format. This was a little unsettling for me and I wasn’t sure where or how I should start. Feeling a little frustrated and brain locked I did what any other SoCal resident would do. I went surfing. Let me clarify that, I have a surf board and I can stand up on it and ride an occasional wave. It is more about being in the ocean for me which may or may not seem odd for a person born, raised and a 37 year resident of South Dakota. So there I was, sitting on my surfboard being less successful than usual when it hit me. I have the character designs already.

Two or three years back I had spent a few weeks sketching some little characters. The freebie art today is an early sketch of these characters. A quick look back through my sketch books and I found ‘em. There in the pages of the sketch book were the characters that I would use for these stories. But that’s not all. I found little sketches long forgotten, that had been taped to the pages. If I didn’t have my sketchbook I sketched on any medium available: newsprint , white craft paper (my guess is it was a table cloth). I found one so wrinkled it must have been in my pocket for few days before it was carefully taped to the page. Anyway, the point is I didn’t throw them out or leave them on the table to be thrown out with the napkins I squirreled them away in this sketchbook for future use. That’s why I keep my old sketch books! One day I may be able to use those other sketches I was talking about. Oooo, I just felt shudder.

BTW, these characters quickly morphed into my portly “beertenders” like the one on my banner.