Frank's Sketchbook Entry of the Day

Today is April 1st, April Fools' Day. But there's not too much fooling going on, as a) everyone has more important things to do, and b) everyone is isolated on their own. Actually, for the last few years companies have turned April Fools' Day into an corporate marketing opportunity. I don't actually miss that. But I figured it'd be worth noting the event.

OK, actually I just wanted to draw another quick picture. It started with me thinking about an expression, and I thought of a shrug indicating uh, I don't know, I don't care. I was thinking of what kind of person I wanted to draw. And I thought of a Jester in the traditional motley uniform (he may be more of a Harlequin than a Jester). Then I thought about how it's April Fools' Day, yet it's not really. So maybe that's why he'd be shrugging.

After drawing him, I thought about the background—where should he be? I wanted it to be someplace deserted, because that's what it's like these days. I started to draw a street, but the thought of drawing a lot of empty houses, and making him cover them would be too much work. And it'd be hard to show the emptiness. Then I drew a 4 lane road, but that didn't make any sense. Then it occurred to me that an empty theater would be a good venue. He doesn't understand why it's empty, but it doesn't really matter, he'll go through the motions anyway.

Note that his marotte (the the stick with the carved head on it...I just looked up that word) is wearing a facemask, a small reference to why the theater is closed. Just to be clear, this was done during the first wave of the SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 pandemic in the US. Also, the full resolution, uncropped image is here. This was done in Photoshop in one pass. No pencils then inking. Just a fairly quick drawing.