Let me just say for starters, that this drawing is from 2017. I had originally put this blog up when I first finished the drawing, but decided to give it a facelift for the new blog structure here on Wix.
Being a native of Indiana, I have a very strong emotional and regional connection to Kurt Vonnegut. Sirens of Titan, Breakfast of Champions, and (of course) Slaughterhouse Five are among my top 10 favorite books of all time. I have always felt Vonnegut captured the absurdity and hypocrisies of life and human nature better than any one. And he has a way of breaking through the fourth wall—of inserting himself in a book as the author of the book— that is magical and unlike any author I've read.
I wanted to create a portrait of him because I knew it would be a challenge—both technically and physically. Using a pen to create gradients and textures isn't always an intuitive thing. And once a line is there, it is THERE. But something I have found over years and years of making art is that if you choose to put limitations on yourself (i.e. "you will only use a black ink pen for this drawing") you grow as an artist. You learn and you adapt. You discover new ways of getting to your desired destination—a finished piece of art—that you wouldn't have even known existed and that is THRILLING! Physically, the act of drawing something with this much detail is exhausting. Tiny little bits of the piece take hours. I'm not exaggerating. HOURS. My hand would cramp and ache all day and I would still draw all night. It's the insanity of artists I guess.
"So It Goes." There's a lot to unpack from those three words, and although I could go on and on about what they mean to me and what his novels mean to my life and worldview, I think I'll just keep this blog post light and show you the SWEET time-lapse I made of the drawing process.
In a wonderful twist of fate, one of my favorite guitarists, Jacky Bastek, gave me the thumbs-up to use her song, "Idyll of Hills," for this video. I asked her without even expecting a response, kind of on a whim like "why the hell not?" And not only did she respond with a "yes," she also told me she liked my work! I fan-girl squealed pretty much all day after that. It was a big exclamation point to the end of months of hand cramps and drawing into the wee hours of the morning.
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