Sleepy Hollow Design Work
...to dream of time for side projects.
Hi y'all! Been crazy around here the past couple days. Hope you’re doing well. Thanks so much for being here!
My thoughts have been so focused on Beorn, I've pretty much mentally cut the legs out from under this Sleepy Hollow project I want to tackle. I gotta say, I'm nervous. Basically, there's just a lot of unknowns with everything I keep thinking about...whether Beorn will get to take up as much of my days as I'm hoping, or if I should keep planning on rounding out my art time with other art to sell and side projects like the Sleepy Hollow idea. But, I've just been cranking away on commissions and starting Beorn production.
In any case, I don't want to completely abandon this Sleepy Hollow project. I'm currently not planning on going all-in with it across the next couple months like I was initially thinking. It was going to be an Inktober project where I illustrated my way through the entire book. That would definitely take up the majority of my time each day (it was shaping up to be a lot of illustrations). That would mean pushing Beorn aside, and that's just not where my head's at right now. But, I guess we’ll have to see how things roll out as I start sharing Beorn progress again and then also when I get to start sharing finished Sleepy Hollow illustrations. Who knows what folks will be into and want to see more of?
In any case, I would still love to do at least some Sleepy Hollow illustrations across the next month for Inktober, and I absolutely want to tackle the whole project someday and have a complete, printed version of Sleepy Hollow fully illustrated by yours truly. That would be freaking amazing. And artistically, I think the style I have in mind would really push my inking. So...I still want to do it, but I also want to push Beorn, so...sigh. Hahaha! We'll see what shakes out :)
How about y'all? Any of y'all read the actual short story? I know a lot of us grew up with the Ichabod cartoon and then of course there's the Tim Burton movie. It's definitely a fun Fall/Halloween story. It also makes me miss upstate New York, for sure. I mean...we don't really get the same sort of Fall down here in Texas. And upstate is so freaking beautiful that time of year. Ugh! I miss it.
Hope you enjoy the preliminary sketches. I liked where I landed with the shots more focused in the dense woods, and I really want to spend some time playing in that inky world. The other shots with the more open areas just didn’t quite fit the same feeling. I also dig where I’m heading with the face studies. I want to lean into heavy cartooning for the characters, but try a more scratchy and roughly inked style for the backgrounds.
Anyway, enjoy!
Thanks again for being here and checking it out!
B
It looks great! Remember to give yourself an opportunity to find your rhythm.
Im using inktober to both get a bit better at my inking but also character creation. Ill take a page from Jake’s (Parker) book and make 30 characters, and I know if I like one it can the be reused for one of my projects.
My only goal on inktober is to take a moment for my creativity and encourage my daughter who’s superbusy at school) to keep her sketchbook close and let herself take a moment of inspiration to her creativity.
Awesome sketches. I read the story recently, and it was a lot funnier than I expected it to be (intensionally funny). I enjoyed how the narrator brought the story to a screeching halt a couple times so they could have some food fantasies. It’s been a couple months, but I just remember him almost humanizing the food on a dinner table at one point.
It also ends somewhat more squarely on (spoiler alert) Bram (or Brom?) being the headless horseman after all. I thought it was more ambiguous. But I enjoy the Headless Horseman, so I can see leaning more into the idea of the ambiguous ending, cause we all like imaging spooky things to be real.
Both projects are great. Go where you are draw (pun intended).