Drawing for Dwelling -Ndusen's Notepad

Lists

My life is full of lists; shopping lists, to-do lists, contact lists. In Chapter Twenty Eight of Doug Karr's novel Dwelling the character Ndusen is writing down a list of his own. In this post you can see the process of how I created the illustration 'Ndusen's Notepad ' for Chapter Twenty Eight of Dwelling.

On the second floor, Axlerod walked through an empty apartment, followed by Ndusen, who scribbled notes into a small pad. The telephone was tolerable, but actually having to be in the same room as Axlerod was another story.

Chapter Twenty Eight of Dwelling by Doug Karr.

Creating an illustration for Dwelling -Ndusen's notepad

Using a dip pen and drawing ink I wrote down Ndusen's list of tasks to complete.

I then applied ink with a brush to add darker tones to the edges of Ndusen's writing pad.

Strips of tape where applied at the edge of the drawing of the pad, when removed later this will provide lighter tones to create the wire binding of the pad. I then applied a real page from a spiral bound notepad to act as a stencil for the circular holes at the top of Ndsuen's pad, I used a brush to dab ink over the top of the holes before removing it to reveal the stenciled circles on the paper. To add a dirtier look to the pages of Ndusen's pad ink splatter was applied to the image using and old brush and ink.

Finally, a dip pen was used to draw in the wire spiral binding at the top of the notepad, and the other detail and outlines.

"All these walls primed and repainted," Axlerod was saying about apartment #7. He pointed to the bathtub, sitting prominently next to the sink in the middle of the dining area. "Bathtub's gone. We're gonna put a glass shower stall and a sink in the ensuite." Pausing at the refrigerator, he opened the door. He turned to Ndusen, "This is relatively new, right?"

Chapter Twenty Eight of Dwelling by Doug Karr.