Twelfth Night

With a boss lingering at work, and a Twelfth Night feast planned for tonight, I figured I would get my blogging in during the day.  In honor of Twelfth Night, I have been re-reading Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.  I have alos been testing out my new A4 size Moleskine watercolor sketchbook, too.  I did some preliminary sketches, and you can see them at http://sketches.inkpuddle.com.  I also started to do a sketch of Malvolio, and then it turned into more of a cartoonish version of a playbill.  If you've ever seen this play performed, you know that when Malvolio comes out smiling in his double-gartered yellow tights, it is one of the best over-the-top moments in Shakespeare comedy.  I made the mistake of using a yellow marker before laying down the ink, so it started to feather when touching the color.  Sir Toby Belch laughs in the background while Olivia is confused.  I kind of want to keep the foreground figures and title loose and then fill in the entire background with color, stripes, almost like a carnival tent rather than theater curtains, if that makes sense.  I also wouldn't mind doing a whole series of caricature cartoons of the whole dramatis personae.

And then I started working on a stipple-effect big-head portrait of Shakespeare.  I did this from memory, just from my own "image" of Shakespeare in my head.  It has issues, but I plan on finishing this one, and it already has me interested in doing more very fine cross-hatching and stipple-effect drawings.