This feature was conceived as a foray into the hearts/minds of Kenyon’s finest artists through the pages of their sketchbooks. This week, we talk with Nick Anania ’14, creator of the Thrill header.

I met Nick Anania ’14 in the Collegian Office on the third floor of Peirce, where he is known to spend a lot of his time. He was kind enough to meet with me during lunchtime, and sat at a computer with a stack of sketchbooks, a bagel, and some kind of Powerade-Lemonade concoction. You can see Anania’s work when you log on to The Thrill website, or when you casually pick up a Collegian.  For those who don’t know Anania, he is quite the artist about campus, creating the artwork and graphic designs for everything from band posters to website banners. If you look up at the header for The Thrill, that’s Anania’s artwork, right there. I was lucky enough to get a look into his sketchbook to see what goes into those designs before they become the finished product.

The sketches ranged from elaborate, architectural drawings to haphazard showers of swords and arrows.

“Every couple months I get really geared up and push myself to do a really complicated drawing,” remarked Anania, who set out to draw this Naval Cathedral over winter break.

Oftentimes, his drawings would spill over into his class notes. “One girl who sits next to me definitely knew I was not taking notes,” said Anania, “Like, ‘Oh, you’re that kid who just draws a lot.’”

When he isn’t in class, Anania is working on projects for various groups on campus, including the band French Club. The pictures below are a mixture of various doodles along with webdesign work for the band.

I noted that there seemed to be a lot of artillery featured in some of Anania’s doodles, and he explained that he has recently been getting into comic book-style drawing. He cited Jean Giraud and other comic book artists as recent influences.

After I left the Collegian office, Nick sent me a screenshot of his “digital sketchbook,” since most of his “experimenting stuff” is digital.

I quickly came to the realization that one Thrill post could not even begin to provide an overview of Nick Anania’s work. Yet, when asked to estimate how much time he spends drawing on a typical day, Anania responded, “Much less than I should.”