I went through this same process with all seven brothers, and their sister. Here is the final picture.
PS. AAh! I’m confused! Why does her blog make no sense? Of course you are confused! But it’s not your fault. This blog entry has 3 parts. The best way is to look at the right hand margin. See where it says Blog Archive? Okay now see where it says Looking for Sasha, Part 1? Yep. Start with that one and read them in order, it will make more sense.
I took away the flowy pants. I gave Sasha teddy-boy pencil pants and here’s how he came out.
My mom says he is her favorite of all the brothers because he looks like Project Runway. (Sasha would probably be too snobby to watch Project Runway, but better that than bell-bottoms.)
I’m illustrating the novel. My story has at its center seven brothers and their sister.
Sometimes the concept of illustrating is kind of hard for me. I went to an art school in New York called the New York Studio School, where pretty much the worst thing you could do was paint something narrative. That was like a dirty word. So was illustrative.
Well, they did have their point. They were trying to teach something very profound. I think they were trying to teach me, in particular, that you can’t get all carried away by your subject’s facial expression before you’ve worked out the formal structure and composition of the work itself. My teachers came from a background of Hans Hoffman, Rothko, Matisse, awesome guys like that. I’m glad I learned that formal lesson and went to that school because that’s how I learned that the language of painting goes much deeper than the surface.
But now I am long out of school and on my own and enjoy getting reacquainted with my narrative streak. The art most dear to my heart is both formally strong but also very narrative. The two can and do co-exist. The Genii scrolls, Henry Darger, Masaccio, Charlotte Salomon, The Bayeux Tapestry Miyazaki’s cartoons, silent films, to name only a few…
Well, so I wanted to do some storytelling with this picture of the seven brothers. I wanted the painting to be about both their essence but also their surface personalities. The ways I would express these things would be: the clothes they wear, their faces and expressions, the way they are standing, and the way their feet relate to the horizon (that means, if one of the guys is floating, you can bet he’s not a very grounded person).
I went through a process new to me in finding all these things out about all these brothers. Writing (and reading) about all seven would take all day, so I will just write about looking for Sasha.
So Sasha, he is a brother somewhere in the middle of the family. He’s about 21 or 22 years old. He has magical eyes that can see anywhere, anything, if he concentrates. He is vivid and theatrical, he dresses very well. He’s witty. He’s beautiful and small, pretty as a girl. He’s also nervous, he has too much energy but, being a fairytale prince, nothing to do. He drinks too much and doesn’t know it. He’s beginning to get cynical. He’s never alone, but he’s lonely.
I don’t know anyone from my actual life who is like Sasha except the younger brother of a high school friend who’s not around so he can’t model for me. But I used my memory of him, a distrustful, intelligent ten year old child with large green eyes by a swimming pool in the summer of 1996. Then I put in the” Sense and Sensibility” movie and sketched Hugh Grant because a big part of imagining boys was imaging their hairstyles, I never appreciate before how many ways boys style their hair and how hard some of them work at it. And then, how would Sasha stand? Sasha stands almost walking forwards, because he is nervous and restless. His ankles are turning a little bit. He’s not the most stable of the seven brothers. He’s walking towards us, away from the horizon, because he wants to interact with you, he goes head on into life.
I always knew the hardest part would be the clothes. I never paid much attention to men’s clothes. I mean, when I played Barbies as a child Ken usually came in a wedding tux or swimming trunks. He didn’t have many options. And most of the actual real-life men in my life have worn T-shirts and jeans.
I thought Sasha would wear something really classy and yet eccentric and so went shopping for him by googling “Comme des Garcons mens.” I mean, if I were a man I would wear nothing but Comme des Garcons! (Well, maybe not, since even as a woman I rarely manage anything but T-shirts and jeans, but you know. In theory.)
The picture above is the picture I found.
I did a test drawing of Sasha in one of these outfits. I was proud. I showed it to my parents and the word “bell-bottoms” was heard. Oh dear. I showed it to my sister Melissa, the co-author of our story who is currently writing Sasha and who knows him very well. “I don’t know,” she said dubiously. “Sasha’s really vain. I don’t think he’d wear loose pants. He’d want to show off his butt.”
