When the idea of
this project occurred to me, I thought, “Is this achievable?” So
I quickly scribbled down ideas for each postcard (each will have
taken under a minute). When I’d done that, I felt there were enough
ideas there for me to proceed with. So these were my starting point
each day of the challenge. Some of the ideas fed pretty much directly
into the final image, some I tweaked and altered and others I
rejected and started again from scratch. But they were always the
first point of call. So here they all are with some notes from me
about where they came from and how they developed.
1. Inappropriate
This was originally
a more in-your-face punk inappropriateness. Like the song, really.
Revelling in its inappropriateness. But as I started thinking about
the design, I thought that inappropriate was a middle-class notion. A
kind of parent-to-child chiding for overstepping some social
boundary. So the idea of the drunken uncle at a family gathering
occurred. A kind of shudder of social embarrassment. Death can be a
bit like that, can’t it?
2. Pretty please
I kept this idea of
the bound-up head, but simplified it for the final image. I just kept
the blindfold around the eyes and ears, the input-oriented senses.
Because this one is about not wanting to know. I also moved Death
around to the front, because he’s not having to sneak up.
3. I am an iceberg
My original idea was
perhaps more literal than the one I went with in the end. But if
Death is as big as an iceberg, then he’s going to be looming up on
a ship. So it’s all a lot less personal. So that’s why I went for
Death pushing someone through the ice. A much more personal,
individual affair.
4. Castle in the
woods
This one was always
going to be a “damsel in distress”. It is very much the essence
of the song – a sense of attraction, but also of being lured to
your doom. A kind of Lorelei. Once you go down that route, the late
15th Century conical hat is the way to go. Only the scene
shifted from the original sketch, from battlement to window.
5. Restart from zero
I was originally
thinking of Death extinguishing a candle, with the horrified face of
the person who was to be left in the dark. But the idea was a bit
confused (as you can see). So my mind turned to the idea of
childbirth as new start. And Death as gynaecologist – to remind us
that sometimes one or both don’t make it.
6. Another dream
This rough sketch
shows that I originally imagined Death waking the sleeper quite
vigorously. But when working the idea up, I opted for a profile which
seemed to lend itself to the sneaking-up-and-giving-a-poke idea. I
went for the shadows against a window partly because I was being
woken by rosy-fingered dawn at the time. So it’s kinda what my
world was like.
7. Lobotomy
There’s an image
from an old movie in my head of Peter Cushing (I think) drilling into
the top of somebody’s head. That’s what informed this first
rough sketch. The image was pretty challenging to execute. I ended up
going wrong and starting again. Putting Deah in a white coat was my
wife’s idea. It solves the problem of multiple layers of bones
getting in the way of each other.
8. Night
This was quite a
strong image in my head and translated pretty straightforwardly into
the final version. I’d got the skull, the classical statue for the
head, the mirror is one we got from a jumble sale aeons ago, and the
hand was mine, drawn while waiting in the car.
9. Medusa
This one was
probably the image I was struggling most with. I’d already done a
Medusa, so needed to come up with something suitably different. And
good. I just scribbled down some ideas for snake skulls and left it
there. It was only when I was half way through the project and this
one was looming that I got the idea for a Pieta. Death feeling sorry
for Medusa and making the only promise he can, “I’ll come for
them, too, when their time comes.”
10. Not a man
Death is one of
those characters we generally refer to as “he”. But that doesn’t
have to be the case, does it? My first imagining was of a Veronica
lake type Death, but when I discovered that I would be doing this in
the anniversary of Dani’s death, I decided to opt for something
much more old-school. Went for late 18th Century in the
end.
11. Please die
The song’s chorus
starts, “Throw yourself out of the window”, so the image of
somebody falling to their doom while Death looks on is an easy one to
pick. The final image owes something to my comic-writing past. The
kind of image Stan Lee would approve of.
12. Can’t breathe
This first version
was more Death by strangulation. In the end I kept Death’s stealthy
approach from behind, but opted for hand over mouth and fingers
closing the nostrils. Death doesn’t always have to resort to
violence, sometimes his version of the Vulcan Death Grip will
suffice.
13. Vanity fair
The vibe of the song
is quite carnivalesque, so I imagined quite a vigorous dance. A bit
folk dance, hoe-down, maybe. But as I went along I was drawn more to
ballroom. I was thinking waltz, then in later drawings it was looking
more quickstep. In the end I moved Death’s leg so that it pointed
outwards at an angle. This made it more a tango, and completed it for
me.
It was accidental,
or maybe because I let the thing follow its own logic, that Death
arrived in card number 1 and finally gets his dance in card 13. I
love that.
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