Drawn in Manga Studio and Photoshop! |
The illustration was requested and I immediately cringed at the notion of having to come up with something for a story about sexual harassment. Topics of that nature are extremely tricky to illustrate in a way that will avoid offending a lot of people. I resisted and tried to wriggle free of it. An illustration about sexual harassment that will run on the front page of a respectable newspaper is too fraught with danger.
When it became clear that it couldn't be avoided, I consulted with colleagues and we all squirmed uncomfortably. Since the story hinged on an incident involving a professor of astronomy I opted to focus on that aspect, and this idea occurred to me when I looked at an image of a large telescope.
I'm pretty happy with it. It's kind of cute, but not too silly; or, perhaps, it's a little silly without being too cute. Or maybe it's both of those things, but it was the best I could come up with. Yeah, that's probably it.
Page designer Chris Gotsill got ahold of it and made it look very nice on the page.
I haven't heard that anybody complained, so I think I got away with it.
The End