My son has been giving me sets of pencils, paper, erasers, pens in a wild variety of combinations. A very good son, he is, so when he requested a drawing of this particular character, I couldn’t refuse. It’s a Tim Burton animaion called Jack Skellington. Where his name comes from is pretty obvious once you’ve seen the character.

I’ve never done a picture of someone else’s character, but there are many versions of Skellington on hats, tee-shirts, and body art, so I figured my drawing couldn’t be much different than all the other drawings I’ve seen of this character. I’ve never seen the character in action. Owen tells me he’s actually done in clay, so he isn’t animated. He is a “claymation” creation which to me is even more complicated than animation.

The original character is wearing a pin-striped tuxedo. I figured my hands were going to be unusable if I even tried to do that much intricate drawing, so I did the stripes in ink and then drew Jack in various shades of gray so you can see which of his limbs are where in the picture.

The background yellow in the picture is color dust from the pencils. I have yet to figure out how to keep that dust from collecting. Even after brushing the page frequently, some of that color dust adheres. If someone out there know how to manage the color dust, I’d really appreciate the help. It’s frustrating because no matter how lightly I use the pencils, there is always color dust. Erasing it is as likely to smear it as clean it.

Meanwhile, I think Jack came out pretty well. It was an interesting process for me, too.

Categories: #Sketchbook, Anecdote, Arts, Drawings

Tags: #Sketchbook, Drawings, Jack Skellington, Marilyn Armstrong