The Black Sheep

When at first I tried this sketching assignment, I pulled up pictures of George W. Bush, a gaudy Christian cross, and piles of genocide victims, realized I was being a tool, and decided to do something a little lighter (and easier, har). I am learning slowly that working simpler and smarter is often a preferable route to the old "grindstone" method, which is at the same time tedious and degenerative to one's nervous faculties.

Anyway, this was really simple. I downloaded a picture of a family portrait circa 1890 and a digital image representative of human male musculature and put them together. I had to blur the anatomical picture, change it to black and white, and erase part of its leg and foot so as to make it appear to be standing behind and off to the right of the family. That was it. My intention is to represent a black sheep, a person cast out of this primitive nucleus for his obviously scientific and therefore godless leanings. He looks forlornly toward the center of the family, wishing he were snuggling in with the rest of them, but alas he cannot, for his ensanguined body would ruin the portrait-day clothing of those he loves.

I am happy with this image save for the fact that I didn't shrink ol' muscle man enough. He's damn tall for a 1890s frontiersman. Aside from that, I've achieved here what I set out to achieve; when I see this picture, I laugh. If no one else laughs, my heart goes out to them, but really, it's their problem, not mine.