Wrestling Sketchbook Drawing Project (2011-pr.)

The process of making these drawings has less to do with image generation, and more to do with eye-hand coordinative practice, building muscle memory with this esoteric visual language. For a drawing to come out looking fully-formed is kind of a fluke. -2013

link: http://wrestlingsketchbook.blogspot.com

The web archive of the WSDP hosts over 50 digitized sketchbooks-- over 5,000 images. New sketchbooks are completed more frequently than the site is updated, but every couple months I’ll take the time to upload another. The cross-referencing on the site is impractically comprehensive because I think it’s funny, and the layout hasn’t changed since it went live on November 26th, 2011.

While the website largely exists as an inside joke, the drawing practice has been key to my creative process pretty much since I started doing it. The ritual entails sitting in front of a TV with a sketchbook and some charcoal and graphite pencils, and recording the movements of a pro-wrestling match as it plays out onscreen. It’s fun, loosens up my arm and hand, keeps me freshly familiar with great bodies, and once in a while will provide insight toward a method of depicting dynamic characters. I generally don’t consider these drawings individually significant, but as a body of work it is incredibly heavy.