Worth Another Shot or Not
by Rey Armenteros
There was a drawing in an ad for a comic book that was just the type of drawing I didn’t like. I could tell the guy could draw, but it was scratchy – scribbly crosshatching coupled with thick, tapered lines. It was so sketchy, I couldn’t tell if it were a girl or a boy (most likely a girl), and she was propping her chin with one hand, holding her head in profile, while holding a flute with the other.
I was in my early teens, and it’s funny how many times in life you hate something and later rediscover how wrong you were. A year or two later, I found myself compelled by this drawing, in love with it, never letting it go! Years after that, with no access to the drawing, I would try to bring it back together. With a pen, I would try to recreate what was there, in my memory. It would never come close, but I would focus on different aspects of it with each failure, like the nature of the scribbling line on my third attempt or the exact turn of the head on my fifth one. That turn of the head was originally from a lower angle looking up. And I would try it again.
That is what I’ve done here, but this time in paint. But what I have here is something that is not even in the same hemisphere of methodology and treatment, what with the color wet-into-wet and my own brand of strokes creating a weave all my own and nothing like that one from memory – of an image that no longer resounds with the same poignancy, but still worth another shot.
