Ancient History Redux

Couldn't sleep tonight so, I went digging through an old stack of books and came across another old sketchbook spanning 2002-2005. There's not a whole lot of interest in there but I did find these two sketches of Aron Ralston and Lance Armstrong from the summer of ’04. You may recall Ralston. He's the climber who got trapped by a boulder in a secluded canyon in Utah and was forced to amputate his own arm in order to survive. These guys were on my mind at the time because I'd just had surgery to reconstruct my left ACL and meniscus. While my meager suffering is nothing compared to what they went through, it was a long road to recovery.

Someone (maybe my sister?) gave me Armstrong's biography, It's Not About the Bike, and it was one of the first books I read after surgery. I'd definitely recommend it for anyone trying to come back from an injury or illness. It certainly inspired me to go all out in physical therapy and I was rewarded with being back to full-time skiing in 5 months (standard procedure is a return to sports in 7 months).

Ancient History Sketches

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Originally uploaded by Tim Clary.

In the summer of 2002 I decided I really needed to get back to drawing. In order to push through my usual bouts of self-doubt and procrastination I decided to use the cheapest materials I could (a $.99 9x12 newsprint sketchbook, charcoal pencils, and a kneaded eraser) and commit to filling the book as fast as I could. Two months later I had 50 pages of fast, fluid linework and dynamic compositions. I was quite pleased.

This was a great exercise and really sparked my creativity. (If only I could sustain that kind of energy all the time!)

(And since I can't figure out how to get multiple images to fly over here from Flickr, here's the link)

Convention Sketches

If you havn't noticed yet, I'm a huge fan of comics...although I lean more towards independant books rather than the mainstream superhero stuff that most of the populace would immediately call "comics". Anyways, I've attended a couple of small-press conventions MOCCA in New York City and the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD. The most amazing thing about conventions like these is that many people will carry a sketchbook that the artists will usually be more than happy to do a quick drawing in. (Usually for free! only occasionally asking that you buy a book or comic.) My book for these show starts with one of my own drawings and at the last two shows I went to my sketches set the theme. The first one, from MOCCA in 2002 was, obviously, Rock and Roll. The second from SPX 2003 was a bit more open...robots, outer space, or cowboys...or any combination of the three! This resulted in lots of fun, creative drawings. I'm not sure if I should put the artists' sketches up without their permission, so for now here are my two drawings.