Cross Roads Blues part 8

 

Another nice day, even warmer than it has been.  Still winter, but very nice out.  Got myself up to the Studio by about quarter after 11.  For music I put on a disc I keep in the Studio, a live album from Bob Marley called Babylon By Bus.  I have written about this one back in October of 2021 if you want to know more.  I probably was in the mood for it because a new Bob Marley bio-pic is coming out soon and the television commercial plays often.  No need for the office today, so I got right to work.  

I was continuing on the latest Robert Johnson block, and started today with the figure in the background.  For this one I borrowed one from myself going back over a dozen years, but one that fit the space well.   I think of her as the Chinese woman, not because of the race of the model (caucasian if I remember correctly), but because one of the other artists at the session remarked that the resulting sketch resembled Chinese writing.  The artist had a point, but in this case I was just thinking of a figure that was in roughly an "L" shape, which is what I was looking for, and I remembered seeing this when looking for another figure piece a few months ago.  I ended up redrawing the figure to change its size and location a bit, but it's more or less what I had planned,  plus I simplified it a little in the final version.  I also decided to make it more silhouette-like, reducing the number of lines and breaking it down to just black and gray.  The idea is that it will sit back and be less of a presence than the arm and bottle in the foreground, while still being recognizable as a woman.

Because the disc was still going, I decided to start on the text at the bottom.  I cut out the first few words from the top line, beginning on the right (or what will be the left in the printed version).  Results can be seen below:

When the disc ended (that album plus a live version of "I Shot the Sheriff" from a different album I had, to fill the blank disc and not on the first album), I decided to pack up, clean up, document it, and head home.