Another of my older pieces from many years ago. It is a piece that even today I am fond of. Also it was one of the first attempts to do a piece of art derived directly from my sleep. On top of that it had a couple humorous moments during its creation.

This was during a time when I finally had started to get a handle on my color pencil technique, and I had learned how to apply to large pieces. So I went through a "Big" period with my work. This piece was about 19"x 28" in size, and at this time I was just starting to incorporate marker into my under color preparation. Also I'd finally learn how to do fire and fire lighting that didn't suck! But this did create some problems getting details right.

First I wanted a human brain in the bottle. I could find drawings and even some photos of human brains but nothing from the angle and definitely not by firelight. So I needed a brain. Now I learned from watching Frankenstein that people take a dim view of you digging up their relatives and scooping out their brains. And you just can't buy one at the store. So I substituted a cow brain instead. However the cow brain was too red for the look I wanted, and I was pretty certain that it would start smelling ripe before I could finish the picture. Answer put brain in an old glass mayo jar and fill it with bleach. Then put jar in the fridge. After a couple days bleached brain.

Next was working out the light of the objects in the picture. Unfortunately one of friends who had assisted me with this kind of problem by doing studio photo shoots had recently moved and no longer had his studio. With hindsight I could have asked my Dad to help with the photo work since he had been a professional photographer, but the though never crossed my mind. My answer. Lighter fluid.

At the time I was living in a house with a backyard that had fairly large bare area in it. I had human skull, plastic, and a good facsimile of the dagger in the piece. My brain in the jar was the right color now and I had collected assorted materials and fabrics similar to what I imagined would be in the picture. So I took this collection bizarre knick-knacks out back and with the help of some cinder blocks and cookie sheets I created this somewhat disturbing still life display. Then all I had to was pour some lighter fluid on the ground around the display. Strike a match, and then stand back observe how the objects appeared in firelight.

Now the problem was I had no camera at the time, so I had to spend several minutes intently staring at the objects in the firelight. Then put the fire out then go back inside and try to get as much of the detail down on paper. Then go back outside and repeat the process over and over again. I'm pretty certain some of my neighbors thought I was a closet Satanist since some of the two story houses could see right into our backyard. At one point I'd been struggling with a detail in the picture and suddenly had brilliant idea of how to tackle the problem and rushed back in to deal with it. It was only after several minutes that I realized that I forgotten to put the fire out in the backyard! Rushing out I discovered that it had started wandering toward the bushes. Many minutes of stomping later I had the fire out. Ah, the things we do for our art.