Not only have I been working on the ugliest painting of all time -- it started that way, anyway, and I'm hoping to drag it towards being less ugly; more news as it develops -- today I learned something very sad.
My sign is gone. I'm almost certain it was there this morning: As I drove by that spot on my way out for the day, I saw someone standing at the bus stop behind my sign, and I thought, "I didn't realize that was a bus stop. If I'd put my sign up the other way around, people could've looked at it while they were waiting." I feel fairly sure I would've noticed if my sign was missing then, even if I could only have seen it from the back.
It was definitely gone when I came back this afternoon, though. I drove around to see if there were any sign crews or something in the area, maybe see if I could get the sign back.
I'm surprised at how hurt I am. If you'd asked me, I would've said I expected it to be taken down. But somehow I thought my sign might be exempt, because it's not in the way and it doesn't say anything and is basically innocuous. I thought maybe it'd just be left alone.
For all I know, someone took it to hang in their house. Which would be okay by me, actually. It's the not knowing which is bothering me: I don't know if the sign's in a dumpster somewhere or on someone's wall or in an evidence locker.
Three months isn't bad, I guess.
The first drawing was pretty poor. I liked parts of it but the body went all 
For the second drawing I fixed some of the proportions but she turned out really angry about it. Also, for some reason her chest above her breasts got all stretched out. And I ran out of paper for her feet (you can't see it, but these aren't the entire drawings in all cases, because I just scanned them quickly and don't care. Also, some of these drawings are on the same pieces of paper). Time to trace again.
Okay, now I'm just all lopsided. And what's with the tiny feet (which you can't see)? She's like some victim of foot binding. And the hands are all wrong. Maybe she's wringing them because her widdle toes hurt. At least she's less pissed off than before. Trace again.
While tracing I realized her legs were too long for her torso and head. Much erasing and redrawing ensued. Desperate, I scrawled in a vague skeleton, which sometimes helps me to arrange things more realistically when the pose is not straightforward. Well, the hands are better, if too big and not what I wanted. And, hey, didn't I want her legs together? She looks like a powerlifter. Too many pencil lines; time to retrace.
Okay, this is closer, the way New Jersey is closer to Brazil than New York. She looks less like a linebacker now. And the hands are...acceptable. Sort of. Now, who wants to screw around with foreshortening the head? Not me, apparently. Hmm, I see the legs are too long. And the crotch is too low. And...I'm going to have to trace this again, aren't I? If only because this face SUCKS.
Proportions rearranged. Hands are not the worst I've ever drawn, but they're nothing like what I wanted them to be. And apparently I was leaning back too far while drawing because now she's warping off to the upper right (which is a major problem of mine because I tend to draw with the paper flat in front of me instead of on an easel or drafting table). The face is even worse this time. I've seen better work in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. And, geez, you know what? This whole thing just isn't going to work, not tonight.
And now for something completely not the same. Back to the sanguine I go to produce this. I started with the face and was so happy with it I don't care about the other little imperfections; the face isn't even perfect, but I like it anyway.
