It's not a particularly good piece of art, nor a good photograph. It's not finished either (and I'm so displeased with it, I might not finish it either) but no matter either. It's one of those pictures that anyone who draws (or paints or sculpts or whatever) comes across from time to time to; the piece that creeps you out. I'm sat watching the television now, and I've got the drawing (in a sketchbook) leaning against the walled up chimney breast on top of a pile of DVDs. It seems less a drawing in a sketchbook, and more a window, and she's looking from her own malevolent world into ours. Something about her face... but not just her face... the background too... the absoluteness of it all. Someone at work noted 'the doomed house' in the background. I've been thinking about that all afternoon. It is a doomed house, but what do I mean 'doomed'? What did she mean 'doomed'? More importantly what does the doomed house mean to the woman in the picture? I showed Andy the picture when I got home. He noted the 'look of disgust' on the woman's face, the way the expression seemed to change, and that old cliche of the 'eyes following you'. It's all accidental. I messed up the eyes really, somehow... shifted an angle too much here on the face... drew the lips a bit too thin, a little too parted... Of course, I am quite pleased I have drawn something which has unsettled me so much... even though it's completely accidental. All I wanted to do was draw a picture of a woman in front of a house at night in a Charles Burns-esque style.
Oh well.
