Frank's Sketchbook Entry of the Day

The phrase "courting disaster" jumped into my mind yesterday, and it conjured up this sort of image. Mad Magazine used to have a segment called "horrifying clichés" which would do a similar thing. As far as I know, I haven't seen any cartoons on this one.

The basic idea is some sort of rube who came a-courting. He'd be on one knee, hat in hand, looking up at the object of his affection. I wasn't quite sure what to make of the incarnation of Disaster. And to be honest, it's not great. But I sort of ran with it, even though the lines aren't great and there's little that's distinctive about her (and she doesn't look all that feminine either). But I liked the sunshine world of his in contrast to the gray, twighlight world of hers. I added the stars, and then decided it was too gray and added the red star. Then I remembered the origin of the word disaster is essentially a malevolent star (or astral influence) and decided the red star fit nicely. There are cracks in the ground by her feet, possibly foreshadowing some upcoming event. I had thought to add some disasterous events in the background, but the art was muddled enough that it would only distract. Oh, and the blobby thing on her shoulder was originally meant to be some sort of ominous bird, like a raven or crow or the like, but then I just left it at that.

This only took a couple hours to do and was mostly because I wanted to draw something, since it's been a while, and didn't really care how nice it looked. So it seemed right for my Sketch of the Day.