It just sort of occured to me that I've yet to tell a soul why I like this drawing so much. So, anonymous internet spelunker, if you're so bold, or bored, I'll share with you.

I remember I drew this in the middle of the night. Granted, that's pretty much when I work all the time now, but not then. Then, I was mid semester, taking all sorts of ridiculous, manditory, oddball classes they deemed important enough to "require". So, between semester long projects, readings, 12 page papers, and work, that was the only time I had to draw. But then, unlike now, time was a factor and a luxury I felt I didn't have. Don't get me wrong, one of the things I'm always trying to improve is speed. Speed and quality are the two things I'm always trying to work on. I feel like I have much more time to draw compared to then, but I digress...

Back then, I felt like I was in the grip of a giant hand, always tightening. Always in a death grip, choking the will out of me. I remember always starting a drawing knowing that if I didn't finished it that night or within that sitting, that I'd move on and it would never be finished. And actually, this was going to be one of a series of drawings. I remember wanting to do one for luck, life, love, death and so on... I guess college just beat the follow-through out of me.

Back to the point- an important thing to this is that I always have a few goals, or ideas, I try to keep in the back of my mind when I draw something. The goals for this particular drawing were to draw it light, loose and fast in pencil, inking it with brush and ink, and having a finished product without mistakes and corrections, and, finally, without erasing the pencil drawing I inked over. So, those were the goals I set in my head when I sat down at, probably around 1 in the morning, to draw this.

I remember Blach Sabbath's Planet Caravan seemed like it was playing the entire time I was working on this. I remember staring at the black background wondering what stars would look like there. If I had to pick a song to go with this, it would have to be that song.

But anyway, I sped through the rough pencil, then got out the brush and inked it. No matter how hard I tried, I never got used to inking with a brush. Now, I use pens exclusively and usually don't even bother thinking about it; I just can't use a brush. Whenever I try to draw something with one, it just turns out horrible. But not this. At least, not to me. It turned out halfway decent. AND without ANY messups. There's no whiteout or paint or any type of correction on the finished drawing at all. And the finished drawing has all the original pencil on it, nothing was erased or corrected. And it was all done before I moved on to something else. All goals achieved. This never happens. I succeeded in all my goals.

It's in a frame, usually hanging somewhere or other. All the original pencils still there, eraser never having so much as touched the paper. All the ink left there by brush, and brush alone.

And it's pretty tiny. Her head's about the size of a dime. Which makes the fact that a brush guided by my hand was what put it there, all the more amazing.

As best as I can recall, those are the reasons I like it so much. It's not because I think it's good. I don't think it's visually extraordinary or unique. It's everything about it that isn't there, what you can't see, and everything that you can. Everything no one else knows about it. It's intangibles.

If only every drawing seemed this significant.