SKETCHBOOK: Moby-Dick

So that my last entry doesn’t keep the top spot forever, enjoy this age-old sketch. I quickly scribbled it out after seeing a riveting four-person pisstake of Melville’s immortal work at the Gulbenkian theatre in Canterbury. The theatre group was Spymonkey, and they were brilliant. The play featured Captain Ahab being beaten up by Moby Dick as a Mexican luchador in a white jumpsuit. Need I say more?

Anyway, this was intended as a more serious concept for a cover illustration of Moby-Dick - Queequeg, the cannibal, carries shrunken heads in the book, so I thought it would be fun to draw the head floating in a jar with its’ ponytail forming a whale shape, evoking Cap. Ahab’s watery death and crazed obsession (head=mind, geddit?). Judge for yourself how effective it is. Probably one to someday revisit, in colour.

Pencil-sketch, inked with nib pen.

CHARACTER DESIGN: “Marius Manitoba, On His Boat Of Bones”

Named on-the-spot for a wolf breed, Marius began his life as a simple white-robed figure with a blank face. Now, his mask is stuck with pins for every life he has touched, and his boat is built of the bones of those who died to keep him fed. 

Marius once thought he was like the ferrymen of folk-tales, and could pass his rudder onto another unlucky soul, and let the wolf’s face be bonded to another old head.

He thinks differently now. 

BAD ART - “A Velociraptor Punches The Mitre Off Rowan Williams In A Boxing Match While A Ghostly Crocodile Leers In The Background”

A rather silly person belonging to an organisation of silly people recently insinuated that I fill my blog with “Bad Art” to “Fill The Silence”. Now, children, I rather do hate for anyone to have to tell awful lies, so I thought I might put some actual Bad Art on here. There, all better.

Perhaps when this person learns how to write poetry, poor lamb, he might decide to help me out with a writing-piece to accompany this terribly terrible drawing. You never know, stranger things have happened.