In a Moment

"Happy 2009" partial draft
Carmine red Col-Erase pencil on copier paper
12.70 x 20.32 c (5.00 x 8.00 in.)

An often asked question to motion picture directors and actors goes along the line of "is there a point in the production when you know if you're making something special?" For that matter, something of a dud? Which makes some sense given the large number of people involved. I don't recall that query posed much to artists, but maybe I'm not reading the right things.

Well, on this piece, THIS is the point that I felt that this was going to be a good drawing. The expressions are pretty set, Tuff-Girl's torso has a nice arc and twist with enough of her legs posed to balance the figure, and the dog, Wichita, is far enough from TG to extend her neck while leaving space between her tongue and TG's cheek creating anticipation.

I use cooking as a better analog for creating art. The choice to stop the drawing process to scan it was akin to stopping beating the eggs only to come back to it and wondering, "Now, where was I? Did I chop the garlic yet?"

Like many things, some thing can go wrong at almost any stage of the process, but I can say that on this piece this is where the process started to flow - where my drawing decisions were more instictual becasue "it looked good" rather than "in order to accomplish 'B', I need to do 'N' and 'Q'."

And that makes THIS my last post before 2009.