
My last flurry of doodling (thoughtfully indulged in during breaks from my previous drawing) produced this sketch among others ...I thought it was an interesting pose but leading exactly to where? Somehow the visual became connected in my subconscious with recent media stories about Ireland's notorious Magdalene Laundries and more specifically the gruesome discovery of nearly 800 children's remains in a septic tank. From there it was just a small step to linking the image with child abuse in general and more specifically child abuse by persons entrusted with the care of children. A horrible scenario but one we are all aware happens all over the world. In our little corner of it too...
Did this sketch start to paint the picture I wanted? Well it was just a line drawing and definitely required some atmosphere. A dark one. So on to step two, a less rigid rendering in ball-point...

Here is an almost "complete" sketch I can work upon. My gut feeling is that this will take me some time and I will have to restrict the palette to a few colours with dark hues dominating. Without sounding perverse I feel that this will be a work I will enjoy doing. It is a newish subject for me even if I stumbled on the idea quite by accident. But then I have always believed that random doodling is priceless and really opens doors to ideas which would otherwise be difficult to think up. Subjects suggest themselves through doodling.

Satisfied with my sketch (I reckon it is enough to go on) I now start on the work proper...a few (and more than a few) hours of "blacking in" the paper with pen strokes, using just black ink dispensed from a single 0.13 (mm) pen.
Because the pen has such a fine line the inking in is a slow process....more so as I know this will be a dark picture and will therefore require thousands upon thousands of strokes. But in the meantime it gives me the chance to look and assess my work as I go along. This is very preliminary work in fact. Getting a feel of it is what it's all about really.
I feel that getting the lightning bolt right will be pivotal to the success or otherwise of this work so I start immediately on this area of the drawing and introduce Prussian Blue around the bolt.
This is more of a reference for myself and will (hopefully) help me gauge and control the darkness outside the window. A visual reference if you wish... For actual lightning reference I am using a couple of random pictures from the internet - most of the time I do not look at them but now and then one does feel the need to have a little peep again...

Still it is a satisfying experiment up to now. Next I did the "landscape" outside the window - basically a mix of green, blue sepia and black - and am now starting on the window edges themselves.
I am also slowly darkening the shadows... initially behind the two main characters in order to bring them forward so to speak...