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I really enjoy a good sketchbook. Ever since I paged through my former Wizard co-worker Ben Morse’s sketchbook, which featured various artists’ interpretations of the Marvel Comics’ “Nova” character (a gallery of scanned pages was lost in the great Wizard website purge), I’ve been endlessly fascinated by the different themes people choose for their collections of art and how they’re interpreted by the artist(s) involved.

With just a few more weeks until Halloween, I thought these two sketchbooks — and their themes — were certainly worth spotlighting here on the site. I’ve included links to a few other favorites of mine at the end of the post.

Rickey Purdin created a weekly “Diary” comic strip for the Wizard website back in the day (which included my first and only appearance in illustrated form), and has finally set up a website to show off his work. He’s been posting a new Halloween-themed sketch each day this month.

One of my favorites is this sketch of the terrifying bunny creature from “Twilight Zone: The Movie”:

I forgot how creepy that moment in the film was… and I think Rickey really captured the vibe in this sketch.

Illustrator Diana Nock recently posted a massive gallery of scans from her themed sketchbook, which features various artists’ interpretations of the Marvel Comics character Nightcrawler (less comics-savvy readers will remember him from the live-action “X-Men 2″ film).

I really like the piece by Andy Bennett (pictured below), who used his own thumbprints to create much of the texture around the fringes of the sketch. (Tip o’ the hat to JK Parkin at Blog@ for putting this sketchbook on my radar.)

While they’re not really Halloween-themed, here are a few more sketchbooks to check out:

If you have a sketchbook you’d like me to see/link, let me know in the comments. I’d love to check it out!

On a final note, I started my own themed sketchbook this year, but I don’t have enough sketches yet to feel comfortable scanning and posting it. However, if you’re an artist and would be willing to provide a sketch, let me know — I’d love to add a few more pieces to the book. I think you’ll probably get a kick out of the theme, too.