Sketchbook: Faces From the Past

Ebony pencil & Sketch N' Wash pencil on Bristol board

Three of these characters are dead, or will die at the beginning of the comic. But they're important, so I drew them anyway. The older gentleman you'll recognize from last week's Sketchbook, and the other two human characters are his wife and son. The three of them loved Cheshire as a family dog, not knowing he'd turn out to be a werewolf.

And Cheshire loved them, but how do you convey a character's deep affection for people who don't appear in the story? Unless you commit to a lot of flashbacks, it's mostly up to word balloons and the character's expression. But a picture is worth a thousand words and all that, so I hope this sketch-of-a-photo of Cheshire's family will tell my readers something about them and why they were important to her.

And in case you've been wondering why a werewolf got named "Cheshire", his striped coat and silly doggy-grin should answer that question.

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