The scent of leather and oil and the rumble of the machine will be irresistible. The Muse and her sidekick will take you for a ride. Sunscreen a necessity. No need for matches.
Sometime after grad school, I dallied with the idea of doing a series of pulp fiction lgbtq covers with the possibility of submitting them to various publishers and ‘zines in the niche. I made this single oil painting and the idea fizzled out as I became more aware that digital panting media was perhaps the best way to compete in such a fast-paced illustration market.
The pulp fiction market is full of subversive stories, wild tales of women gone rogue, stepping out of their gender roles and I was eager to make my contribution to the genre. I’d been contemplating the addition of some kind of fantasy or “magic realism” element to the image so that it would seem beyond normal yet well within imagination. and so the impossible little flame.
Somewhere between the sketch and the finished painting, I added pants to the paler figure. I’m not sure how that happened but it did.
This sketch was not even 5” high and had little detail. As you can see, it initially included a third figure (a sheriff?) but was eliminated for the final painting.