The Creature That Ate Britney

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Okay, first of all, this post has no code words. “Britney” just means Britney.

Second, careful readers of Impossible Kisses will have noticed that today’s post is really a kind of sequel to a post from last year, Britney Spears: Death By Dinosaur. In that post (also a post without code words!) Britney was hired to perform for the guests at Jurassic Park. When Britney died at the park, apparently in a classic rock star manner, her people leaked a story about Britney being eaten by dinosaurs because it seemed like a more glamorous way to die. So, today’s post is an illustration not of the actual events of that fictitious story about Britney at Jurassic Park, but rather it’s an illustration of the fictitious urban legend that has grown up around the fictitious story of Britney at Jurassic Park. Cha-cha-cha!

Third, looking carefully at today’s post, you can see that I did the lettering with a dip pen instead of a felt tip. I like the look of this lettering much better than felt tip lettering. However, even so, I dislike the process of using a dip pen and a bottle of ink so much that I strongly suspect I will go back to using a felt tip.

Fourth: The color in this image was rendered with colored pencils. I’d intended to end the year with an acrylic paint cartoon. I even did test mixes to get the colors correct in paint. However, I abandoned that plan. And I think I figured out why I’m hesitating to switch to acrylics for this kind of work. When I complete an image like this, I put the “finished” piece on a table off to the side of my bedroom. Then, for a day or two, as I’m walking in and out of the room, I’m always checking out the image in different lights, from different angles. I often pick up an eraser or pencil and make little corrections, changes and tweaks to the image. If I use acrylics, that process of making final little fixes would be much harder, because I’d have to squeeze out paint, mix it and clean up afterward for every little change. It’s just much more convenient, right now, to use stick-based colors of various kinds.

Finally, although there is no conscious coding in this post, many hours after I finished the piece—during the period when I was making little tweaks and fixes—I noticed that a person might construe there to be something like a hidden meaning to the image. It’s something that happened with absolutely no forethought—no conscious thought of any kind!—on my part. I’m not going to dwell on or discuss that hidden meaning here. However, sometime in the future I may come back to this post and use it as an example of how people creating something are often the last people to know what they’re really doing.

Sometime in the future, I may do a post on the topic of how that concept seems to separate “arts & craft people” from “arts & entertainment” people: arts & craft people always know exactly what they’re making and a careful arts and crafts person probably would say you must know exactly what you’re making for it to come out properly; arts & entertainment people almost never know what they’re making, often even after they’ve finished making it, and a careful arts and entertainment person probably would say that’s why art and entertainment require serious skill, because you must make something come out properly even though you have only the vaguest idea what it is you’re making.