Inside of My Sketchbook (and by extension, my black heart)

On Facebook, I shared a warm-sketch I did this morning while brainstorming about the look I want for The Dream Thieves' animated book trailer. It is this:


Someone asked me if I would give a "tour" of my sketchbook. I actually have a few laying around at any given time, but this is one of my oldest. If you want to see the contents of my black heart, you can click on the image below to see the full set.


As you can see, I used to take it with me on tour a lot, so there are a lot of doodles of people sitting in airports and restaurants. You can also sort of tell which novel I was writing at any given time, based upon the drawings. And some of them are sketches for finished drawings. For instance, the first sketch on the third row became this:


And the second sketch on the last row became this:


My hands smell like turpenoid.



(oh, and also, on Twitter, someone asked me if I could teach them to draw. Here is my biggest piece of advice for every artist — and writer — out there: draw what you SEE, not what you know is there.)