I ripped off the cellophane wrapper, slapped on one my stickers and started sketching in my new sketchbook tonight. It's some sort of decomposing skull with plants growing out of it. 

I bought this book a couple months ago. I had recently learned about House Industries via designer, Aaron Draplin, and I really liked their work. I also have a tough time with lettering and I feel it's not as strong as it could be. After picking it up I only read a couple dozen pages then set it aside for weeks. Today, after feeling guilty from streaming a bunch of TV & movies and only reading comics, I picked up the book and put a nice dent in the number of pages. 

Last night I started reading Lord of the Flies again. I had to read it in middle school or high school as an assignment but I don't remember much besides the general story of a bunch of young kids getting stranded on a deserted island and becoming savages. What I'll never forget is a scene from the 1990 movie where they kill the character named Piggy. He was a dorky fat kid in glasses and I saw myself in him cause I was/am a dorky fat kid. I think that scene scarred me for life. It's a short book and I'm 3 chapters in right now. When I'm done I'm gonna rewatch the 1963 black & white movie and the 1990 color version. 

After posting this on Instagram someone commented about a real life "Lord of the Flies," where 6 Tongan schoolboys got shipwrecked and stranded on a deserted island for 15 months in 1966. Their story was a much happier than this book by William Golding.

I cleaned the fuck outta my room today. Dusted, vacuumed, wiped, decluttered, & consolidated a bunch of shit. That is all.

Today I finished reading the book Erotic Comics. I've had it for almost 12 years and it took a pandemic for me to finally read it. I also did my stretches & warmed up at home to go running at Lake Cunningham Park again. It was a great workout, and as an added bonus, the entrance I came in from was locked when I was done so I ended up walking to the next exit and I got some extra steps in. I did some more pencil work on my Eyes & Mouths drawing. Just a few more things I gotta do before inking. Despite all the shit going on, today was pretty damn productive.

Yesterday I got a new addition for my small collection of Edward Gorey books. The Doubtful Guest. It's a rhyming storybook about a weird creature who comes to visit an Edwardian families home. The first Gorey book I bought was The Object Lesson. I found the little hardcover at a Savers thrift store and fell in love with the illustrations and the super weird story that makes no sense. Next, I bought the Gashlycrumb Tinies. It's basically an alphabet book where each letter represents a kid dying or getting killed. Wikipedia says Gorey wrote over a 100 books. If they're all like these then I want them all.

Last year I took pictures of drawings from old sketchbooks. Each book has it's own photo album/folder so I also took pictures of the covers for easy reference. They each have their own stickers & markups. 

Originally I thought about making zines from my Inktober drawings but recently I changed my mind and now I want to make books. Small hardcover books similar to Edward Gorey's. Black ink/print on white uncoated paper. Today I started researching how to get hardcover books printed and pricing. I would really like to get these made so I'm looking for a good vendor to make help make it happen.