The Art - "Self Portrait - Fire Gnome"

Self Portrait - Fire Gnome

approximately 5 1/4" x 8"; ink on paper.


This is the eleventh piece in my 70-part David's Book (AKA The Blue Book) project.

This self portrait is pretty much a direct response to the last one. It's no coincidence that it immediately follows it within the order of the book. I wouldn't think of creating two self portraits back to back, but I was more or less forced to do so.

While I was making my way through ...Red Face, I suppose I used a bit more force on the pen than usual, because it seems I was able to tear tiny holes within the paper that allowed ink to bleed through to the next page. There was no way I was thinking of scrapping the paper because it was marred, since they were tiny blotches I knew I could work around them and incorporate them into the next piece. But what to create next? I somehow didn't think it was right to disregard the accident... if that makes any sense. I felt that because the ink came from ...Red Face, the next piece should honor that in some way. Looking at the blemishes brought to mind sparks. Then I started to think of the way fire was instrumental to ...Red Face; if he was the fire, this next one would be the spark; an offshoot.

So the ...Fire Gnome was born, with the idea of honoring and taking cues from ...Red Face. Because the ...Gnome was a spark, I thought I'd scale down my usual image size. And since I was gonna make something humanoid, it's diminutive size led me to create something impish and gnome-like. So taking cues from ...Red Face, the entire image is pretty much self explanatory. You can see the fire, you can see the face, you can see the demon, you can see the samurai; all whispers of something greater and more refined. In regard to the rest of my sketches, this piece truly is a sketch. It was meant to be rough. Just a swath of an idea. I imagine he is an envoy of ...Red Face. Maybe one aspect of that creation? Pure anger? Probably not. Something on the order of Chaos I think. Anyway, like I said it's just a sketch... I can't say I put all that much thought into the piece, everything was pretty much written out ahead of time. I just drew what I could see.

DS333, divining.