"Femme Fatales: The Art of James J. Caterino" is packed with 125 pages of illustrations and is now available in a beautifully packaged, glorious 8.5 x 11 glossy paperback and on Amazon Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.
Below is the book's introduction.
Introduction
Why do I draw?
I draw for the same reasons I write.
Because
it is easier to draw than not to draw. Because these are images I want to look
at and no one else has drawn them. And above all, I draw to keep my sanity.
Because drawing is the ultimate therapy. It quiets the mind. It focuses the
thoughts. It calms and nourishes the soul.
But
there is a monumental difference between my writing and my drawing.
I
actually have talent for writing. It comes easy. I wrote my first short story
at the age of six and by my early teens I was capable of producing some pretty
readable stuff and by college actually had a classroom of fellow students
pushing back on a professor (a Pulitzer prize nominated author) who was
critical of a story that they were very taken by.
But
my drawing skills, shall we say, have not come so easy.
Let
me put it to you this way. In 2015 I could not have drawn a straight line with
a ruler. But the burning desire to put pencil and brush to paper just would not
go away. I had to draw, or else. So I studied. I devoured art books. Watched
YouTube instructional videos. And above all, I practiced. Do anything often
enough on a regular basis and with enthusiasm and passion, and you will get better
at it. So I did improve. Gradually. Even stubbornly. Although not exactly Drew
Struzan, Robert McGinnis, Julie Bell, Alex Ross, or any of the other countless
masters whose hard-backed books pack my shelves, I was at last at least able to
begin enjoying my own work—even feeling the need to post it, sell some prints
at conventions, and eventually document some of it in series of published
sketchbooks, one of which you are holding right now.
And
I hope you are able to enjoy my work too, and that perhaps the drawings within
these pages, no matter how raw and imperfect, are able to convey that
indiscernible, visceral satisfaction a fan of illustration can get when gazing
upon a super cool drawing with the just the right vibe.
Enjoy and all the best,
James. J. Caterino (April 9th
2019)
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