Chocky

Chocky.
In '99 I did a series of water colour illustrations to advertise radio dramas of various kinds for the pages of the long-running British listings magazine Radio Times. They were reproduced small so strong images were mainly the order of the day. This one was for an adaptation of John Wyndham's ' Chocky '- a story about a boy who falls under the influence of a force from outer space.
It was done on rough surface cartridge paper from a pencil drawn base rendered into water colour. Not much more to say about it - except for the process of getting to the composition. I could never stop myself from doing a great many roughs of other possible designs when I was asked to submit some for these illustrations. A colleague who also did a number of them for the RT told me he'd only do a few to submit, and inevitably one was chosen which he was commissioned to turn into finished art. Me - I could never stop at a few. I'd always be thinking, no, there's got to be a better one, maybe I'll try this... or thinking, no, this isn't good enough, there's got to be something else that's exactly right... At some point, I'd have to mentally throw up my hands and think, no, stop now. But it was often hard to reach that point. Thankfully my agonizing always stopped at the moment one of the sketches was chosen for completion. Then I found myself in another work phase where the only important thing was to make the sketch that had been chosen work as finished art. Another game altogether.

Original art available from www.cadencecomicart.com.