Lethal Embrace
I had a lot of fun coming up with names for this one. "Performance Pressure",
"Under The Gun", and "Black Widow" were all in the running, but
"Lethal Embrace"
finally came out on top. This drawing posed a lot of challenges for me, and I'm
not convinced that I accomplished what I set out to. The first challenge was
getting two characters to interact with each other convincingly, which is always
tricky for me to do. The second
challenge was actually drawing a male character, which after drawing exclusively
women for the last fifteen years was really tough. And lastly, I'd never drawn
a Walther PPK before, so I'm not sure if I got the size and proportions right.
The PPK is a very elegant and feminine gun that just seemed appropriate for this
image. While I'm fairly happy with the results, the tone of the image is totally
wrong. The woman isn't very threatening and doesn't look nearly dangerous enough,
even though she's got a gun pointed at the guy's head. In fact, she seems to be
enjoying her partner's advances just a little too much. On the other hand,
the guy looks like he's calm and in control of the situation, oblivious to the threat
of cold steel against his neck. The balance of emotion, power, and domination seems
completely opposite of what I was striving for. I originally wanted the background
to be a set of blood spattered curtains, but I had trouble drawing that and was too
lazy to try splattering actual paint on a piece of paper for the effect. Anyway,
regardless of whether it works or not, it was a worthwhile experiment.
(computer colored pencil drawing - October 30, 2001)