Terrible Horrible Edie, take two

This cover illustration is very different from the one I posted yesterday. Same artist, same brushes, same drawing board, same colors even. Sometimes the line is less smooth, less liquid. It has to do with the brush I pick up, probably one that's been roughed up a bit, but occasionally the paint is simply different, as if it decides "today I'm going to clot and dry quickly on the brush." It might have something to do with the humidity. I've been doing this for thirty years and I can't explain it.

An artist wants predictability and uniformity. But art is better when the artist isn't on auto-pilot. I painted something the other day which came out very differently than I expected. The sky glopped up on me and overlapped the buildings, some of the lines looked like I'd painted them with a stick, some were as fine as a single sable filament. I hurried on, didn't slow down to force the medium to behave, hurried to finish it off as an experiment. The awkwardness infused something special into the picture. Now all I need to do is remember how it happened so I can go there again.