Jul 28 2009
Quantifying an epic
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)
– 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)