I continued with more cleaning and polishing. Lots of little things that most people wouldn’t even notice, but were a huge problem for me. Other people see art in my work. I see flaws and errors. With time, I’ve learned to catch more and more of those, fixing them as part of the process.
I came in with some black and started detailing. I guess from a couple decades of making comic books that I still consider the touching up and detailing to be done with black, like it’s ink. But hell, that’s become the more identifiable part of my work. Might as well dance with the girl what brung me to the dance.
And here we are at the end of day two. It may look a whole lot like what I started with and I know I was wondering what I’d just done with a whole day, but I was finally getting happy with it.
While working on this, a kid drove up and jumped out of his car, exclaiming how much he loved the piece, then asked if it was cool if he took a picture. I turned to look at him, serious, and matter-of-factly said, “No.” Then, channeling Robert Downey Jr in Iron Man, “It’s really cool.”
I had one more element to add, and that one element would take that night and a few hours the next day to do.