Seeing My Characters

And just like that, three weeks blow by and I didn’t make one single post to the blog! It’s been a whirlwind summer. What with summer band concerts (my last one is this coming Friday) and my son’s imminent departure for college, I’ve haven’t had much time. I’ll try to do better once September starts!

Tonight, my local library held a “Learn How To Make Your Own Cosplay Costumes” seminar tonight. I went with my family and had a great time. It was a short seminar geared toward illustrating and designing characters. We started with pre-drawn character forms to create our own designs. I took this opportunity to sketch out Saxon and Joan from the novel (DISCLAIMER: In truth, it was really supposed to be Malcolm and not Saxon, but the face definitely came out much more like Saxon than Malcolm). Here they are:

Although the drawing of Joan is stylized, I am happy that I was able to capture some of the images floating around in my cranium. I feel like I’ve finally got to see them in more detail.

When I write, I tend to imagine it as a movie playing in my head, albeit a very fuzzy movie. I usually can’t completely imagine my characters’ faces in any detail whatsoever. If I was better at faces, I’d try to draw Malcolm, but given my design of Saxon, it would likely look exactly the same only with a different name.

In other news, work on The Reluctant Agent continues. I’m in the middle of the second round of revisions. I’m hoping that September sees it ready to show to someone else. And after that, more revisions!

Before I sign off, let me once again encourage you to sign up on my mailing list. I still only have four subscribers – and one of them is my wife. I don’t want to make one of those annoying popups asking you to subscribe, so please consider subscribing. I promise I won’t spam you with tons of email. I’d just like to keep people up to date. And please feel free to interact with my by leaving comments – I try to administrate them as quickly as I can.

Until next time, happy journeys!

Mike