This month I’ve been participating in yet another daily drawing challenge, #inkpril, which has the same premise as #inktober, except it takes place now. I’m a lot busier in April so I can’t contribute a drawing every day, but I am sticking to my chosen theme this time, which is unusual words pulled from The Wordsworth Book of Intriguing Words. So far I have only illustrated various manias, so it’s become an even tighter theme.

Oh no, I just looked at my sketch and their toes are in the wrong order. I blame insomnia for that one. Actually the alternate title of the book I mentioned above is The Insomniac’s Dictionary. It got me thinking about how wonderful and important it is for an illustrator to build up a good reference library. There is something about leafing through a book of obscure words or a field guide to beetles that Google Image Search and Wikipedia will never replace.