pasithea

Once again, I've worked myself into a corner. The picture to the right is froma sketch I did several months ago. I was cleaning up my directory and I ran across him and decided to try colouring him on the train. I'm at the moment in the piece now where I ask myself, how do I finish it? what is he looking at? Right now he's strangely ambivalent. His pose and expression betray nothing, but what he's looking at changes not only the whole mood of the piece but steals the life from him and makes him an icon.

For example, what if he were looking at:

A butterfly perched on his fingers.

A sophisticated-looking electronic circuit.

A broken copy of his own face.

A teddy bear.

The sheen of blood dripping from his fingertips.

A glowing nuclear core.

A human baby.

A strange alien life form.

A toilet plunger.

A bottle of coke or other product.

Each thing drastically changes the mood of the piece, and also, steals some life from him, making him more of an icon. In many ways, he's the perfect subject for early montage. I could perhaps do all of these pictures with subtle changes in lighting and in subject and display them in some random sequence. It would be interesting in the sense that viewers might think about how each icon changes their opinion of what is happening in the scene but it would also completely rob him of life and reduce him to nothing more than a sociopolitical comment. I don't want to do that to him.
I just don't know what to do with him from here. Even a name seems like too much.