aboutimage galleriescontactsubscribe

Dead Snake Handlers - and Sex

MAY 20, 2013
Out of the entire story, there was this one scene in the book where the main character was having a sort of 'wet dream' about a mysterious snake handler that was helping her out on her property while she is working on her house. A mysterious man; snakes; sex - you can do the math on this one. I decided to go for it with my sketches and Irene went with it. A few of them might have been a bit overt but sometimes, you have to take a chance and see what sticks.

This piece is a little tighter than I normally go. Lately, I've been in the mood to render and my vision for the piece required it. I've been combining a bit of rendering and graphic-ness to my work lately but I'm not sure if I'll continue doing it as I am starting to feel a bit restless and want to be more expressive as I normally am in my work. Still, I really love this piece and very happy it came out the way it did.

Thank you Irene at Tor! It was a fun job and got to watch quite a few reruns of Columbo while making all those scales.
Here are the sketches I sent in to Irene and below are some process shots during the course of the painting. I did have a false start there early on when I put a black texture down all over the piece. I couldn't see the transfer anymore. With some other paintings, its not so bad but since this painting was so involved I had to rethink how I needed to do the piece.

I ended up re-prepping the board and starting from scratch. It was no biggie - I thought I was going to save time, instead I spent more time. Such is life.
© 2024 Scott Bakal