On sketchedbylester & Imperial Ink
Instruments of Illustration
I do not see myself as an artist. I create to escape the hells that spring up around me and to face the darkness of the day; drawing is one of many tools I use to do that.
Contrary to what my work may make one believe, I struggle greatly with finding the proper words to go about expressing myself and my ideas to others.
I feel things, painfully deeply at times, and Lester's Lexicon is not yet wide enough to hold all of it, which is why I built my life around learning, reading, and writing in the first place.
The widening of my mind to learn what it needs to describe itself is slow. In the interim, I draw to express what I do not have words for, and this is the Lesterian House of Imperial Ink.
Skills ReForged
If I can name my circumstances and see them laid bare before me, I can find a way to overcome any obstacle.
A darkness once fell upon me so complete that I was made to drift from my path to progress, and wandered in obscurity for some time.
I fought that darkness, and won.
When I stood above all that had once broken my spirit and laid me low, I set my hands to the work of ensuring no crisis could attack me with impunity ever again.
A Philosophical Canon of my own, branded under my likeness, was required, as was a catalogue of those demons which prey upon the weak willed under the shadow of the darkness set about our shared daylight.
So I built my systems, and began creating my new reality.
I called those tools my "Frameworks for Chaos". In their design, I was made to remember:
I used to draw a lot in high school, and somewhere between the Marine Corps and everything that came after, I fell off.
While planning for Operation Exodus, I found my way back by accident. On a supply run to Hobby Lobby for an entirely different project, I looked over in an aisle and saw the calligraphy section just... sitting there...
"I could do that; I wanted to do that.... Why haven't I done that? Isaac's.... Iconography....... Those, belong to me, now."
I spent that night experimenting with both glass and dip pens, and by the next day I had the scaffold in place for what became this House.
It feels good to have lead and ink back at the forefront of my mind. I can communicate things easier through creation than through conversation sometimes, and for a long time I had no release for any of the more complex concepts from my inner worlds...
Isaac's Iconography
Everything I build has its own symbols with their own maps of meaning; the drawings carry them.
The assorted Houses I publish under each have a visual language that belongs to them the same way their words do, and when I sit down to draw, that language springs forth from my pen.
Lector Carissime and The Faithful, who know my work, will recognize the mark of Lesterian Delirium wherever it arrives on the Internet from this day onward. For those who have not yet had the pleasure of exposure to my insanity, they will meet the Lesterian Canon here first, on my silly little magick cards that turn so much pain into usable power.
The Pipeline
It starts with lead.
I sketch the image in pencil first, working the shape until it holds what I need it to say. Then I draw it in ink with the dip pen, and through detailed iteration or divine intervention...
I arrive at the finished product
Finished "drafts" post to r/sketchedbylester, because of course I need another place to schizo ramble about the voices in my head, the demons in my dreams, and the Frankencreations they move me to make.
Behind that, I keep a log within the ONA, and for redundancy I am building a gallery on Pinterest with all works gathered, pointing back to Isaac's Ideas.
Lead and Ink
I do not see myself as an artist.
I am an ordinary man driven to unnatural extremes. My life has brought me hardships, and through inventing light to guide me through that darkness, I've remembered that I know how to create as well.
There are experiences, emotions, and ideas buried in my bone marrow, scraping against the inside of my soul, for which I have yet to find proper words.
That is what Imperial Ink is for.
What I cannot express with words, I shall bleed from my depths onto parchment in ink.
Illustrations of the Lesterian Inner World to illuminate the terrain I stand on, and true Weapons of Words for the War of Wills.
Creator Captain TheIsaacLester
w/ QuarterMasterBobertLe'UnBending
Lux Ex Tenebris
Per Aspera Ad Astra
Legio Sum
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