WHERE IT ALL BEGINS...
@DRAWNBYAGGIE is the official abstract artist for the Don't... series. Losing herself to the reflection of human nature through her art of complex shapes and symbolism, she's ventured into the dark realm of Don't.... And with Gray and his love of abstract art whispering in her ear...
"Wow... just where - just how do I begin?"
~ @drawnbyaggie
BACK IN EARLY 2023, I LISTENED to the first couple of chapters of Don't... Book 1, and I was completely gone with awe. I burned through the rest of series in no time. I fell in love with Jack L. Pyke’s writing (and Dan Calley’s narration), the characters, and the story so much.
Don’t… was all I could think about.
WHEN A BOOK, A PIECE OF music, a theatre performance, or a piece of art hits me as hard as Don’t… I feel like I’m bursting at the seams with emotions, thoughts and reflections. And the only way I can process these emotions is by creating my own art: mostly abstract pieces that have deeply interwoven symbolism.
I can never portray realism (I wish I could with Don’t…!) instead I use abstract shapes and hidden meaning to capture my ‘feeling’ for the piece, add my own ‘spin’ to the interpretation.
SO WITH THE DEPTH OF emotions, with the level of obsession Jack L. Pyke’s books have ignited in me, the idea for Don’t drawing series was born.
FOLLOWING THE ORIGINAL IDEA, I PRETTY quickly knew two things: that I won’t be satisfied with just one drawing representing the Don’t… universe, and that I will need more than just the drawings to try and visualise the depth of my obsession with the Don’t… world.
Whenever the idea for a drawing takes a hold of me, I start seeing glimpses of the drawing in my mind’s eye and it ‘stews’ in my head, almost as if I’m drawing it inside my mind until it settles enough for me to start making the first sketches.
DON'T… DRAWINGS STARTED FLASHING IN MY mind in sets of shapes until I started seeing a pattern. The pattern was a game board, dipped in reds, blacks and metallic circular shapes interwoven by shapes crossing one another. I realised I was seeing a Tic Tac Toe game board. Which is so fitting, as Jack L. Pyke is the master at playing mind games with the reader in the most perfect ways. . So it was no wonder I was seeing a game board as an inspiration for the Don’t… drawings as well.
TIC... TAC... GO
WHEN I HAD THE IDEA FOR the Nine pieces and the general layout of the Tic Tac Toe O’s and X’s across the board, I went further down. I ended up creating at four levels: a board of Nine main pieces, all touching one another in some way, one for each Don’t… novel.
Then I needed Mini versions of the Nine - a way for me to focus on the centre pieces of each and get a ‘feel’ of how the end result was going to look like; as the third level, I needed to find what I call ‘mood pictures’ that I overlay alongside memorable quotes from the novels to give a more realistic representation to the images flashing through my mind of the Don’t… characters and the world.
AND FINALLY, WITH MY ART PROCESS, music plays an incredibly important part.
It’s as if I need to find a piece of music that ‘fits’ the mood of the scene, moment, character, plot line the drawing is inspired by. So when the mood image, the quote and an art work in progress is filmed and fitted together, I add them in a video and overlay it all with the music that has the most perfect ‘fit’.
Music disclaimer: the artwork depicted is for non-commercial usage. Any music used in these videos was used to aid the creative drawing process. Full credit to all artists: Eli Sandes and Linkin Park.