I've always been fascinated by antique dolls and figures and old sculptures and all those knickknacks that people used to collect. Fascinated and terrified a bit, I guess. So years ago, I got a couple books out of the library on antique dolls, and I started a sketchbook dedicated solely to that theme.
I sketched a bunch of different dolls and tried to stay faithful to the drawings, but added my own twist or flair wherever I saw that I needed it.
And then I just kind of forgot about that book.
Not that long ago, I showed it to Sam and she fell in love with a bunch of drawings and wanted to make real versions of them. Sew them, or repurpose old dolls.
There's something cool about how decayed and decrepit they looked.
Then recently we were at a thrift store, and she actually found one of the books that I reference, like the exact book that I reference. So we matched up all the poses and found the exact same photos that I drew from.
So that got me interested in kind of picking that sketchbook up again and seeing if I could finish it. I had only drawn in half the book, so I had the whole extra half to to finish.
When I originally started the book, I for some reason I only drew on the right side, probably because I don't want to smudge it or whatever. So then later, two years later, I went back and redrew on the left side the drawings that existed on the right side. And that was fun for me to sort of, get the initial drawing out whatever way I could and then redraw them with like, cleaner lines or simpler strokes and just try to simplify those things and make some decisions about them.
This time I decided to use a couple different types of media. Some a little bit of marker, a little bit of ink, a little bit of pastel. Not too much because the sketchbook isn't really well suited for that, but just enough to give these, these new drawings a different look from the old stuff.
I have trouble finishing sketchbooks, and I used to think that was a problem, but now I think I'm okay with it because it allows me these pleasant little surprises like this, where I can go back to these old sketchbooks and just sort of continue the theme.