From Sketch to Spine
Where Process Matters More Than Polish
Black & White Sketchbook began as a place to share drawings.
This one begins with a sketch.
Not a finished concept. Not a polished idea. Just a symbol, an arrow, and a sense that something needed to be emerging.
That was all I had.
An infinity loop.
An arrow piercing through it.
A few drops of blood.
And the feeling that it wasn’t resting on a surface — it was coming through something.
If you draw, you know this stage. It isn’t clarity. It’s direction.
The first lines are rarely right. They’re exploratory. You put them down to see what they want to become. You erase more than you keep. Sometimes you draw with the eraser as much as with the pencil.
This cover began the same way.
The Sketch
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| Infinity sketch using Microsoft Paint -- concept primer |
The original drawing was simple. Almost too simple.
The symbol sat neutrally. The arrow pierced through cleanly. The drops of blood hung exactly where you’d expect them to.
It worked.
But it didn’t move.
It felt like an object.
And the story it represented wasn’t about objects. It was about crossing planes. About something shifting from one state into another.
So we started nudging.
The Early Iteration
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| Symbol redefined |
This version had the right ingredients.
It just hadn’t learned to move yet.
This refinement didn’t happen with graphite. It happened through conversation — shaping and reshaping the image with an AI tool.
Not prompting once and accepting the result.
Iterating.
Shift the lighting.
Soften the texture.
Reduce the obviousness.
No, that’s too static.
Tilt it.
That tilt was the hinge.
Just a few degrees. Hardly dramatic.
But suddenly the symbol wasn’t resting anymore. It felt like it was emerging through a plane. It had posture. It had tension. It felt like movement instead of placement.
Funny how a few degrees can change everything.
At one point I even joked, “This isn’t a real infinity symbol, is it? We might have to get L’Hôpital in here to make a rule.”
Creative refinement has that quality. Slightly absurd. Slightly mathematical. Entirely iterative.
Drawing With an Eraser
What struck me most wasn’t the tool.
It was how familiar the process felt.
Whether I’m sketching with graphite or refining an image through AI collaboration, the creative act lives in the decisions:
Make it emerge.
Let it cross.
Shift the weight.
No, too obvious.
Yes. That’s closer.
The final cover doesn’t look exactly like the first sketch.
It looks like the sketch after it was allowed to evolve.
That’s how drawing works too.
You don’t begin with perfection. You discover form by correcting it.
The Version That Crossed
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| Final KDP Cover |
The concept never changed.
Infinity.
Arrow.
Blood.
Emergence.
What changed was posture.
The symbol stopped sitting.
It started crossing.
That was the moment it felt right.
This became the cover for Astral Rob.
And interestingly, that cover also marked something else for me. Finishing that decades-old story shifted it from a private idea into something that existed independently — something with structure and potential. I wrote more about that shift in a recent post over on Nearing Retirement and Broke, where I talked about how completing a long-held project can quietly change its category. If you’re curious what that decades-old idea eventually became, Astral Rob is now available as a published digital novella.
But here, the lesson was visual.
The tool isn’t the art.
The direction is.
If you’ve ever erased half your lines before something felt balanced, you already understand this process.
Sometimes refinement isn’t about adding more.
It’s about tilting the whole thing until it finally moves.
Process matters more than polish. And sometimes the eraser does the real drawing.
TTFN
Frank
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