ADVENTURES WITH SHARPIES!

 "The Earth Tumblers 1"  Julie Jacobsen

This has taken me a while to complete-this little project.  I wanted to do another fanciful composition.  So I opened my old sketch books, again, and looked for a fun image.  Once I figured out what I wanted to do I started in with the Sharpies but I didn't really like how it was turning out (the second image in this post).  I didn't like the girl in front of earth because I felt she looked too dark.  Plus it looked to me like people playing with a ball-sort of.  I wanted it to be more of a galactic imagery (Chris' word: galactic).  This one is called "The Earth Tumblers 2".

These are the Earth Tumblers and I wanted them to appear as almost invisible when viewed from earth.  They cause a lot of good and sometimes not so good-depending on how they want to tumble things.  The Earth Tumblers come from their own planet, Tumbletest, and they are constantly being produced.  As soon as they mess with earth then they quickly evaporate into outer space-only to be created again and again.  So, no wonder our world is constantly in an uproar.  There are other Tumbletest planets in the other galaxies but this is the most active one.  Earth is so fun to upset.

If you look hard out into the night sky you might see the outline of a Tumbler.  They are there but hard to see.

This is the original drawing. 

A PROJECT FOR YEARS AND YEARS!

Probably about 20 years I submitted an idea for a writer for his fictional children's book.  He didn't accept it.  I thought he was really picky but, oh well, that's life.  So I threw the drawing into a drawer.  Who knows what ever happened to his book.  I just looked him up and he died this year!

Anyway, I have pulled that thing out of the drawer many many times thinking it was a fun drawing.  I've always loved Arthur Rackham's illustrations.  If you have never looked at them you should.  Just Google and enjoy to your little heart's delight. I keep getting sidetracked but I really have been influenced by those wonderful early 20th century illustrators-that's why I mentioned him.  My drawing has a kind of Arthur Rackham feel to it-although his are darker in their mood.  About  a year ago I decided I was going to actually doing something with this.  So I put colored pencils in front of me while I'm working and if I have some down time for a few minutes I put a few marks on this drawing.  It's been slow, careful, going but fun in a satisfying way.  If you look at how the 'Mona Lisa' was painted you'll learn that that was a 'picked at painting', also,-for many years.

I just thought I'd show some of the progress and then again in a while. It's going to look a lot different when I'm finished.