"Sunday Funnies", 11 X 8 1/2", Ballpoint Pen on Typewriter Paper, Begun 4/13/98, Completed 4/18/98, 7 Hours.
"I just felt like drawing a little one evening before turning in, and not having any particular idea in mind I decided to do a family study showing a father reading to his child. Then when I actually began sketching I became so interested in showing the close physical contacts that I began adding more and more figures until this scene emerged. Anyway the boy to the right of the father was my starting point due to his being an overlapping figure. Then the boy to the right of him followed and then I began the father a little before switching over to add the boy to the left of the father. Then I added the end of the couch and the cat which was meant to be the extent of the development of that side of the picture. Then switching back to the right side I added the older (bigger) boy and the little one scrunched in beside him. Then because the background seemed a little naked I started adding more kids, first the one on the right of the father's head, then the one at the end of the couch grabbing at the paper, and then the other two on each side of the paper and then finally the boy straddling the couch on the far right concluded my preliminary rough draft. Then in completing it tonight I completed each figure in about the same order with only a few very minor changes, mainly shortening the small girl's hand (left) and adding more figures starting with the two sleeping toddlers (right), to break up the monotony of all those feet, the t-shirt right to obscure part of the couch which I was also tired of drawing and the whole of the background including the woman, who I decided at the last minute definitely had to put in an appearance. One note there is that I had two other ideas for her pose, one with a whisky bottle in her hand and the other to show her with a gun to her head, but I finally decided that the whole of the rest of the picture was weird enough. One other small change perhaps worth mentioning; because of the maze of appendages among the boys on the right I became confused and started to omit one arm of the boy in jockey shorts. So when I caught the error I had no where else to put his arm than down his brother's boxers, a habit that curiously enough I tended to notice practiced by several brothers that I knew when growing up."