A few weeks ago my roommate came across a few large plastic bags on the side of the road, full of pens and markers – discarded office supplies that were up for grabs. He stuffed them all in his backpack and brought them home. When I saw the stash I knew what my focus was going to be for the next week – sketching with the sharpies found in those bags.
The timing worked out well because I’ve been reading Scott McCloud‘s book Understanding Comics, and I wanted to try my hand at the style of drawing that McCloud uses. So as I read I tried sketching a few of the images that were particularly appealing to me. I also started adding in some sketches of objects that were around me at the time. Here is the set of images that I ended up with:
I enjoyed sketching with sharpies for a couple of reasons. One is the permanence. I had to be careful with each stroke because there was no erasing. Another is the large format. I was using standard sized sharpies, which meant that in general my sketches were larger than what I am used to doing. This exercise was a good companion to reading McCloud’s book, and makes me want to try my hand at making comics one of these days.