'Femme Fatales: The Art of James J. Caterino' available in paperback and on Kindle

"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 9^th 2019)