A Bit of Twine

Copyright © Peter MacDougall, all rights reserved

A Bit Of Twine is a surreal horror story written by James W. Hays and was published in E-scape. It is the story of an elderly demeted father who pushes his son past the breaking point.

This was the first time I had ever done an illustration for an entirely electronic publication, and the first time I landed a project via the World Wide Web and E-mail.

The first rough sketch was scribbled out just as I was going to sleep, often the best time for me to roll ideas around in my head. This first sketch (minus the Captain Crunch_TM cereal from the story) eventually became the final artwork. I drew out two more ideas, hand coloured copies and posted them on the Web for the editor and publisher to retrieve. The final artwork is a colour reduced and tonally adjusted scan of a 8.5 X 11 acrylic painting. Final digital work was done with PMView.

The extra electical cord behind the shovel was added to the illustration when I did the original painting and realized I needed to balance the bright orange of the cord. I lifted the cord off the ground to give it a feeling of life, even though it was an inanimate object, much like the father in the story was at that point, hovering somewhere between life and death.

Below is a second sketch which was more abstract, surreal and evocative of the protagonist's plight.