Today’s sketch doesn’t really come from any ‘deep thoughts’ or a jam thread happening on any art forums or anything like that. I was just thumbing through one of the TELLOS trades this morning and I kind of got fixated on how I drew RIKK back then. It’s odd– even though I had a book on foxes that a studio intern gave me (hi, Tessa….!) to reference– and I DID use it (though it doesn’t really show), the way I drew RIKK at that time was to make him look more like a dog than a fox. I think one of the things I did back when Todd and I were first working on TELLOS was that though I love to draw animals, I was trying to draw my impression of what the animal characters I was drawing were more than what they actually looked like. That’s, I think, a conceit that I’ve since moved beyond. At one point, I felt that an artist should be able to work mostly from his/her memory and…. I guess, heart…. instead of working from an informed place of having reference from which to springboard. At times I set aside the golden rule I heard so many years ago that one should ‘learn the rules before going on to break them’. I think I’ve done much better in that regard in the subsequent years of my career. Life is, after all, a constant learning experience.

Well, tomorrow– the seventh day of the seventh month of the 2007th year– is supposed to be an incredibly lucky day. I hope that each and every one of us has something lucky happen to us. Have a great weekend, all.

This is Entry 397.

Mike