Busting Loose
No pretense or deep symbolism here - this is 100% pure pin-up art. The inspiration for this piece was from Japanese model Megumi Asakura's aptly titled "Promotional Video" (1999). Of course, she looks absolutely nothing like this. This drawing fully embodies all of my frustrations as an artist, and is a perfect example of the journey from inspiration to madness. Everything about this drawing was a complete pain in the ass. I spent a good three hours on the mouth alone, reworking it so many times that I eventually ripped through the paper. And if there's an article of clothing more difficult to draw than the plaid pleated skirt, I've yet to run across it. I also made the mistake of drawing the face last instead of first and I just couldn't get the expression right at all. I wanted the image to look lively and playful, but instead I kept ending up with a dull and vacant looking porn star face that reminded me far too much of either Nikki Cox or Liv Tyler, which completely ruined what I was trying to accomplish. Granted, the focus of the image is the body, but the tone of the image is expressed in the face. Instead of just quitting and starting all over (or just abandoning it altogether), the demon in my head had taken over and continued to wrestle its way out onto the paper accompanied by tears of anguish and frustration.
As if the original pencils weren't aggravating
enough, I somehow felt compelled to color this image. I tried using markers at first,
but I couldn't bring out the detail that I wanted in the skirt. Then I tried colored
pencils, but the results were even more disappointing. Next, I tried a combination of
markers and pencils which looked really awful. I finally decided to bite the bullet
and computer color it. It literally took me seven months to color this damn picture,
and then there was the challenge of putting in a background. All of my recent pin-up
art has been devoid of any props or settings, but this image really felt like it needed
a sandy beach background with palm trees waving in the distance. After several hours of
trying to draw an acceptable looking palm tree, I finally gave up and just went with the
bizarre looking Q-tip trees that you see here. They don't look too bad, do they?
(computer colored pencil drawing - August 2001)