16 October 2005 12:43 PM

Cross a young Francis Bacon with an even younger Neil Gaiman, plus a heaping dose of light animé, and out comes a sketchbook like John Walsh’s. Deft, dark jokes on dieting in the form of a sandwich with stapled crust and a locked-down burger give way to fine pencil studies revealing, in one quirky instance, a trouser leg and shoe, the foot inside revealed through short, sharp and articulate lines. A mixed-media two-page plan for a large work features an as-yet-unclear story line involving a flooded house, monsters, and a king but gets bogged down in sloppy paint washes—the skilled lines of Walsh’s drawing style disappearing too quickly under the muck. One hopes His Majesty will come to the rescue.

—Lori Waxman