THE WORKING SKETCHBOOK
Every finished plate in this Archive started as a mess on cheaper paper than this. What follows is six folios pulled from the real working sketchbooks — first marks, discarded directions, colour trials that never survived past the trial — laid out in the order the pieces actually happened, not the order they look best in. The numbering here (Folio I through VI) is only for this page; my own folios run past four hundred, and the note the Archive quotes in the Baba Yaga essay — hand unrecorded — was unrecorded because it never occurred to me anyone but me would open Folio 14 again.
Folio I of VI
Every hut starts as a shape I’m not sure is a hut yet. This is the page where I find out whether it’s furniture, or something considerably worse.
Recto
Fig. 1 — charcoal, first pass. Legs before house.
Drew the legs first on purpose. If they don’t read as furniture before the roof goes on, the whole thing is a chicken with a house strapped to its back — a different, worse story.
1
Send references, the character or scene you have in mind, and the format you’re after — a single portrait, a small scene, or a triptych.