I drew this in my Rock & Roll Documentary class at RIT one evening in January 1998. On that particular night, we were watching a film called "Gimme Shelter," about the Rolling Stones' 1970 festival-gone-wrong at the Altamont Raceway in California. After the film, our teacher, Pacho, gave us a hand-out of an article that featured a caricature of Mick Jagger. His face was recognizeable yet grotesque and was detailed in all fine lines. I dug the look, and my doodles from that night were all influenced by it. After a few sketchy things, I drew a basic black ink version of this on the back of the handout.

Often times, I can't really explain things I draw. I mean, I can tell you what it literally is, but I can't tell you why it is. What this is is a man's severed head (who vaguely resembles David Brinkley of ABC News, though that wasn't intended) floating in a jar of liquid. I can't tell you anything about its meaning other than it felt like the right thing to draw at the time.

After drawing it, it sat on my desk for a week. I finally scanned it (using my old, old Logitech hand scanner - 16 levels of grey, if that'll help date it) into Photoshop and colorized it. Colorizing is a slow process, but I've discovered some helpful ways to color 'inside the lines.' First is, don't color IN the lines; color BEHIND the lines - take your drawing and make it the second layer of a Photoshop document. Set this layer to 'multiply.' This means that you can throw anything behind it and the blacks and grays of your drawing will stay dark on top of it. This is basically how animation cells are painted - on the back. While flat colors on the lower layers are often sufficient, I wanted this to look like more than a cartoon from the Sunday paper. To that end, there are about 12 layers under the drawing, affecting everything from the background to the refracted green light on the tabletop.

You gotta love Photoshop layers.