This was a bit of an odd one for me. For years I’d had in my head a visual link between conkers (or Buckeyes if you’re American) and the theory of the collective unconscious. It was a loose visual allegory in my mind & I’d always toyed with the idea of doing something humorous with it.

Anyways, one morning I found myself doing a very quick sketch of a ‘conkerheaded’ boy in front of an uprooted tree. I didn’t have any preconceived idea about it, no theories or anything, it just popped on in there. I was lucky enough not to be committed to doing any paid work for a few days so I just got on with it – & it felt great, I plowed through it.

Then there was a bit of a break before I decided to add the border with the Ouroboros. I’d found a great book for my wife’s birthday called Sow & Grow it’s about gardening for kids, but I knew my wife would enjoy it too (we also happen to have a two & a half year old, that she can share it with). But inside are some really beautiful illustrations & these great decorative borders. So I knew I could add another dimension to the picture with something similar.

In the end it didn’t really turn out humorous at all, I saw it more as an illustration for some kind of Hesse-like fairy tale from ONE.  

I named the boy Pictor.

I’ve since worked out what the fairy tale that it’s illustrating is… but you’ll have to wait until The Nao of Brown comes out to read it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 7:50 pm and is filed under Spare time. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.