Very Proper Charlies
- VERY PROPER CHARLIES - A black ink and gray color pencil drawing on an 11 x 14 size vellum paper. It appears in the paperback book, "Destinies (1)".
Reading this story brought to my mind the "ashcan" age of American art that emerged during the 1930s depression years, when things were pretty bad on city streets, prohibition was a disaster, crime was more rampant than ever.
I started by drawing vague city images on tracing paper, things that came to mind about that era, the buildings, pawn broker signs, movie marquees, Chinatown, fire-escapes, etc. etc. I kept reminding myself not to be too specific, to stay away from details, to stay within the "ashcan" style which I felt suited the story. Eventually the tracing paper was filled with rough cityscape outlines. The "running man" was yet to be drawn. I then cut the tracing paper up to separate the individual buildings and objects. and began moving them around on a drawing paper that would hold the final picture. I stopped when I had created an appropriate background composition.
I now had to sketch in "the running man with the gun". To do that I sketched the running man on another tracing paper and moved it around on the background sketch until his location felt right to me, and then I transferred the running man onto the drawing paper to join the background sketch.
When I was in the finishing stage of inking and shading, I decided to add the auto and the mysterious stranger that you see under the running man's right foot, which were also a part of the story.
And that's how this picture was created.
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