Inventing an Icon

The best iconic images are blunt. Simple. Realism is unhelpful, really. It's distracting. When I was working on this I'd recently been working on a series of gesture images, with a more painterly and realistic outline, so I took effort here to make the fist awkward. Awkward because protest isn't graceful or lovely, it's rough and tumble, but also because awkwardly drawn anatomies are more sincere somehow. Cimabue is more sincere than Raphael. Ben Shahn is less slick than Norman Rockwell or Andrew Wyeth. It's as if we see the imperfections in a rendering and feel the need to look past them for something more. It isn't a realistic diagram or rendering so it must mean something too. Realism is itself. Unrealism is more suggestive.

Large hand, small shoe

The way I remember it, tying his shoes was like tying on a sparse gray hackle. He is now 6'3". Next week he turns 18. He tells me he is excited about being able to smoke while he votes. (Joking.)

Moon in Hand

I like spending time in antiquarian bookstores. I seldom find what I am looking for, which is exactly the point. Finding what you didn't know you wanted or needed is more fun. It adds something to the work, whether I'm writing or illustrating. I think it's called "cross-bred vigor." Uniformity is boring. So, I wasn't looking for it but I found a book filled with Renaissance and Baroque imagery: moons, suns, heaven, hell, planetary machinery, angels and demons, a catalog of supernatural rigamarole. I'd forgotten how to crosshatch, but it was fun relearning it. Dead masters can teach you a lot.