Archive for July, 2009

Jul 28 2009

Quantifying an epic

Published by under odyssey,reviews,tools & tech

As I finally wrap up this monster of a book, I’m struck by the quantities of materials consumed in the process of making it, including physical stuff like pencils and tape, and also the numerous audio books I listened to while drawing & painting in the studio for 9+ months. For the interested, here’s a (fairly comprehensive) list what I consumed in the course of creating the art for The Odyssey:

40 Cretacolor Nero pencils (#3 medium – make a blacker line than graphite)

5 Plastic erasers

4 rolls artists’ tape

4 75-sheet pads of 12×16″ Fabriano 90lb. cold-press watercolor paper (each pad is about 1″ thick)

Upwards of 120 bags of chips (corn, potato, pita, root veggie, etc.)

3+ reams of printer paper

At least 22 inkjet cartridges and 1 laserjet cartridge

.

The following audiobooks, listed by author (good unless otherwise stated):

Louisa May Alcott – Little Women

Anonymous – Gawain and the Green Knight

Bill Bryson – A Short History of Nearly Everything

Cervantes – Don Quixote (switch to an abridged version after seeing how funny but long-winded it is {which makes it good fodder for adaptation})

Eoin Colfer – Airman (didn’t like)

Daniel Coyle – The Talent Code (simplistic premise, but some very valuable insights about learning and teaching)

Joseph Delaney – The Last Apprentice

Corey Doctorow – Little Brother

Arther Conan Doyle, Sir – The entire Sherlock Holmes oeuvre, for the umpteenth time.

Kathleen Duey – Skin Hunger (lamest “ending” ever)

F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby

John Flanagan – The Ranger’s Apprentic, books 1-4 (fun but highly predictable)

Jostein Gardner – Sophie’s World

Hermann Hesse – Siddhartha

Laura Hillenbrand – Seabiscuit (fabulous)

Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird (excellent, of course)

Geraldine McCaughrean – The White Darkness (excellent)

Frank McCourt – Angela’s Ashes (great, depressing), ‘Tis

LA Meyer – Bloody Jack, books 1-4 (great reader, gets better as it goes)

Kenneth Oppel – Airborn

Ovid – The Metamorphoses

Alan Paton – Cry the Beloved Country

Sylvia Plath – The Bell Jar (enjoyed way more than expected)

Terry Pratchett – Nation (awesome!), Wee Free Men

JK Rowling – The entire Harry Potter series (great on audio)

Louis Sachar – Holes

Mary Shelly – Frankenstein

Jill Bolte Taylor – My Stroke of Insight (recommended, but not on audio, as the author is a terrible reader)

Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

John Updike – Rabbit, Run (didn’t like)

Virgil – The Aeneid (didn’t like)

Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse Five (great), Breakfast of Champions, The Sirens of Titan, Cat’s Cradle (awesomely weird)

Jeanette Wall – The Glass Castle (great)

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