Project: Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Ichabod Crane

One of my all-time favorite stories is Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I read it every year when Autumn is getting closer. I read it a little early this year. So sue me.

This is a project I've thought about for a few years but I've never committed myself to anything until now. SO I figure the best way to begin is with the character designs and work out from there. And the best place to start is Ichabod himself.

Here's how Irving describes our "hero":

In this by-place of nature there abode, in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, "tarried," in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a State which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.

So there ya go! I have to say one of the hardest things I've discovered about trying to get him to look right is that nose! I've never really had to draw a long nose from the front before. Getting it to look like there's a bit of length to it when you have it straight on is a bit of a challenge.

Keep your eyes peeled for more sketchbook postings!

BTW: If you want to hear a really good reading of the unabridged story, check out B.J. Harrison's rendition on iTunes.