City Silent cont'd...

It's been awhile. My computer recently decided that six years was enough time to pass and that it would now like to have a major problem, please. To that end, the hard drive failed and had to be replaced. I had two backups so restoring wasn't a big deal. Still was without the machine for a week and I missed it.

Since releasing the last chapter of "The City Silent," and my book on portraits on my Gumroad store, and the nearly total lack of interest, I supposed I've succumbed to depression a little. I haven't felt the spark to draw much of anything. Today, I really had no reason NOT to try and draw something. So I pulled out the next song in the list, took a look at it and managed to get the whole page done. It's the track card, acting as a transition between the last song and the next. I knew I wanted it to be a lot less stiff, a lot less referential. Silas is mad at his departing muse and is about to throw a tantrum. So I need for this track to be more emotional. Using thicker, more textured lines will, I hope, help out with this.

I still maintain that I'm not a cartoonist. Certainly not a successful one. This isn't comics, it must be something else.

Though the client was satisfied, I wasn't. I really wanted to interpret the photo provided in some way that felt at least a little more....something and a little less pose. So I tried the cut paper style with it and am much happier than I am with the other version. It is a very tricky thing to do, working with so few details and still hoping for likeness. I think it's there, but not as obvious. Might play around with the colors, too and move away from the browns. We'll see.

An old high school friend contacted me about possibly doing a portrait of him based on a photo he liked of himself. I said I would try. It is not a photo I would choose as it's too posed, to traditionally composed. But he really liked it and my partner did as well. So I went at it. It was surprisingly hard to do as the contrast isn't high, I didn't want to focus on details that would make him look older or having less hair. Imagine my surprise when he came back to me, twice, asking me to remove more and more hair. In the end, he was happy with it and I guess that's all that matters. I kept to my favorite Dutch masters brown palette which, seeing it was a black and white photo, seemed totally appropriate. I would have done this totally differently. At least he looked through my portrait book and told me what he liked, so that's a bonus.