A peek behind the curtain

I know some of you think of me as some pre-Dorothy version of the Great and Powerful Oz. Or that you think this shit just shoots out of me like bolts of lightning from the forehead of Zeus. But no. Sometimes it takes a bit of work, a bit of backing-and-forthing.

Witness the three stages of The Wounded Man that I went through tonight:



The question has to do with the placement of the M16...



Wow, this is fun.



And it ends up here for a couple of reasons. The first being, I thought the rucksack clogged up the left side of the picture and I wanted more room for Kate to do her thing. Second, I like the way the vectors line up better this way. Third, the placement of the rifle against the tree nicely mirrors the placement of the sword in the original. And finally, I liked giving more emphasis on his right hand, which, as near as I can tell, is grabbing his balls.

Here is the original, just for reference:



If you look closely at the GI in my series, you can see that his shirt is open and his chest is bandaged. The idea is that much of the area surrounding him will be dark, like he's sitting in deep shade, but the light will strike his facial features, his hand holding the gun, and the white (and red) of the bandage--a close approximation of what my boy Gustave was trying in the original.

I couldn't be more fired up.