s k e t c h b o o k

Slowly but surely

they come at night

to snatch away your good dreams

and fill you with fright.

My introduction to e.e. cummings began in AP English when Mrs. Wilkins read she being Brand out loud to the class.

Oh boy.

I came across the kingbird poem a few years later during my senior year of college. I didn’t do any thumbnails like one should, but rather was just keen on getting the image out of my head and onto the page.

the original below, a quick pencil sketch blocked in with acrylic, ink, and colored pencil

Quite a while of time went by before I revisited the image. I decided to start with obtaining some reference for the figure. While no photo reference helped with stylization and simplicity in the original, I did want a little more character in the face.

new sketch relying on the reference, perhaps a bit too heavily…

While I didn’t really like where this was going, I had the urge to try a more traditional approach, working a bit larger on illustration board, rendering with charcoal and acrylic. More of an exercise to warm up the ol’ hand skills, I guess.

Pretty soon, though, I ended up wanting to get back to some of the stylization and shapes of the original.

I was pretty satisfied with this combination of rendered form and flat areas of shape. The next step was to color digitally, a process that I have been doing more and more of recently – with mixed results.

Does it really convey what the poem is all about? Perhaps not as much as it could. However, I am happy with the progress of the image and the final result. Always fun to see how things develop and change.