Amdall Gallery

It’s been a couple weeks since I finished the Dark Tower series, and I still find myself thinking about it. I suppose that’s a good indicator of a fantastic story; that your mind wanders back to it even after you’ve put it aside. Although I’m sure I’ll read the series again some day, for now at least, the books are in the review mirror. I’ve already written some post-series thoughts about the finale, along with sketches of Roland and Oy. Since I think it’s a fun outlet for these Dark Tower thoughts to put them to paper, I decided to try my hand at another one.

Originally, I wanted to sketch something with Eddie, Susannah, and Jake, since I’ve already done solo drawings of Roland and Oy. But, I thought the more people I add, the smaller they have to be…which means less detail. After pondering it a while, I decided to scrap Eddie. This is partially because I couldn’t 100% decide what he should look like. I’ve sketched Eddie before, but there wasn’t much detail, and honestly he and Roland looked very similar. My imagination ping-pongs between Eddie looking sort of like Rufus Sewell and more like Steven Weber from that show Wings.

I had a better mental image of Susannah and Jake, so they became the subjects. I also decided to include Oy, because he and Jake were so close. And I wanted to make it light-hearted, after all the tragedy the group suffered. Here’s an animation of how it came together:

I’m actually surprised how satisfied I am with this one. They came out exactly as I imagined, which doesn’t always happen. I have to admit though, I had a lot of help from real life inspirations on these characters. I was thinking of a cross visually between Zoe Saldana and Jada Pinkett Smith for Susannah, and there are plenty of images online to reference. Jake was even easier, because I think the kid from the Dark Tower movie looks a lot like how I pictured him. I didn’t exactly replicate the actor, but he was a good template/jumping off point for “generic looking kid.” And I’ve already drawn Oy, so I’m getting better at sketching raccoon-ish creatures.

Here’s the final sketch:

After finishing with this drawing, it seems I was still buzzing with Dark Tower energy. I tried to go back to my solo sketch of Roland to add some color, but for some reason it didn’t turn out too well. I guess the world evens out! Knock out one you really like, then wreck a different one. Oh well! I’ll probably try another related to the series at some point this weekend. I think it might be fun to try good our excellent villain Walter Padick/Randall Flagg next.