Selecting Your Stuff

Sorry I've posted this a little late, but Angela Hill wrote another nifty story, this one discussing the stuff we have and probably don't need. Angela's story is here. It's a few weeks old, but timeless.

My illustrative accompaniment is a play on Charles Shulz's Pigpen character. We go through life and the possesions that we accumulate and drag around with us can seem to be a cloud of debris that eventually ends up somewhere else by way of garage sale, thrift store or garbage truck.

Open link a new window for a monster-size version of the illustration as it ran online;
a moderately large monster, that is. Not King Kong, more like Mighty Joe Young, but still big enough to intimidate!

Hopefully it's not too oblique a reference. I think that the people who still read newspapers are people who grew up reading Peanuts during it's initial run, and they will make the connection.

Every once in a while I try to cut down the clutter in my life. This morning I stared for a full minute at two shelves full of old magazines that I don't need anymore, but I have one of those annoying emotional attachments to them. Several years ago I had about seven shelves of old magazines and because of a de-cluttering frenzy, I'm down to two. And you know what? I haven't looked at them once since I selected them for saving. I might be on the brink of another severe de-clutter.

Here's how it looked in the paper on a page designed by Jennifer Schaefer.

Back to the illo: I tried to keep it loose and light, not only because it was a busy work-week, but because I really liked the rough I submitted for approval. I don't show it because it's pretty much what I ended up with. I wish I had stuck with the original figure (shown below, left) and gone with her. Sometimes drawings that are modified with the intention of making them "better drawings" can end up losing some of their charm. The second one walks more like a real person, but the stiff spine and simpler face of my first effort appeals to me more.

The initial character sketch and her eventual replacement.

Drawn in Manga Studio, colored in Manga Studio and Photoshop.