The following painting is pretty much all of my creativity this week. I'm not getting anywhere with anything else, only talking to myself on the couch, while I sip my coffee, about the hypothetical day I get back to work on He's There, and what I will do first, second, and third within a given time frame. The goal is to finish ch11 and ch12 and revise the plot of the third arc by the end of summer. Hopefully I will do more than that, but this is a plausible goal given my condition.
So... work-in-progress "Erik" as a senior:
What makes this so fun to explore might be the fact that I'm trying to use his physical body the best I can to explain what he's going through, and I'm painting him like a human being. Nearly all my artwork of him the past ten years, save for a couple depictions from the final chapters, have been portrayals through the lens of Lily's obsession and awe for him. Portrayals of him the way he would want to be portrayed: as a stranger, a superhuman, a silhouette, a living doll, a "predatory bird" as one friend said... a phantom. Every scar covered, his face clean shaven and powdered, his hair always black from root to tip, brushed seemingly "a hundred strokes". He's the kind of man with a lint roller in his glove compartment! The way that he appears in my story's time frame is so polished and deliberate that I've almost had no choice but to conform to this intention, his intention!, any time I draw him.
But here, in this painting, he has not become himself. The catalyst (that is Lily) has not dropped into his life quite yet, so he hasn't made himself fit for scrutiny, nor capable of allure. He hasn't the muscle to fill the suit, the means to transform himself, or even the nerve to write to her. He's just getting by, probably on and off antipsychotics, so half his days he feels like the walking dead, and he hates it. He feels invisible and insignificant. He has no idea where he's going after this. Graduation, which he won't even be able to participate in, is like a wall he can't see around. Still, he sometimes has grand visions about himself and fantasizes about retaliating, rising above, breaking every rule. It may seem that he takes on "the Phantom" as a way to woo the girl, but it's just as much about indulging his own frustration with himself.
I was thinking, with regards to his bruises from practicing parkour, that he probably will injure himself in much more critical ways the more danger he puts himself in. I could even see him face-planting into the concrete and scraping the skin off around his eyebrows (since he later has an eyebrow that won't entirely grow back.) Maybe having to heal from that around the same time that he started taking the idea of himself as "Erik" so seriously is partly why he started cutting his face. I still haven't worked that out.
* * *
On a muuuuuch lighter note, I had to take a break from that after recurring thoughts of ice cream cones and Hare's butt, so the hot weather inspired me to whip out this:
Teheheheheeee~!
So... work-in-progress "Erik" as a senior:
What makes this so fun to explore might be the fact that I'm trying to use his physical body the best I can to explain what he's going through, and I'm painting him like a human being. Nearly all my artwork of him the past ten years, save for a couple depictions from the final chapters, have been portrayals through the lens of Lily's obsession and awe for him. Portrayals of him the way he would want to be portrayed: as a stranger, a superhuman, a silhouette, a living doll, a "predatory bird" as one friend said... a phantom. Every scar covered, his face clean shaven and powdered, his hair always black from root to tip, brushed seemingly "a hundred strokes". He's the kind of man with a lint roller in his glove compartment! The way that he appears in my story's time frame is so polished and deliberate that I've almost had no choice but to conform to this intention, his intention!, any time I draw him.
But here, in this painting, he has not become himself. The catalyst (that is Lily) has not dropped into his life quite yet, so he hasn't made himself fit for scrutiny, nor capable of allure. He hasn't the muscle to fill the suit, the means to transform himself, or even the nerve to write to her. He's just getting by, probably on and off antipsychotics, so half his days he feels like the walking dead, and he hates it. He feels invisible and insignificant. He has no idea where he's going after this. Graduation, which he won't even be able to participate in, is like a wall he can't see around. Still, he sometimes has grand visions about himself and fantasizes about retaliating, rising above, breaking every rule. It may seem that he takes on "the Phantom" as a way to woo the girl, but it's just as much about indulging his own frustration with himself.
I was thinking, with regards to his bruises from practicing parkour, that he probably will injure himself in much more critical ways the more danger he puts himself in. I could even see him face-planting into the concrete and scraping the skin off around his eyebrows (since he later has an eyebrow that won't entirely grow back.) Maybe having to heal from that around the same time that he started taking the idea of himself as "Erik" so seriously is partly why he started cutting his face. I still haven't worked that out.
* * *
On a muuuuuch lighter note, I had to take a break from that after recurring thoughts of ice cream cones and Hare's butt, so the hot weather inspired me to whip out this:
Teheheheheeee~!
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