Scientists make me laugh when they reconstruct the appearance of an ancient leviathan based on the discovery of half a single fin bone. Later, someone reveals that it wasn’t a fin bone after all but belonged to a twelve inch rodent.

Still, it happens that large pictures derive from the shouting out of some small visual that brings the rest of the unpainted composition to mind. The first painting I did of Leah, aged five or six at the time, came to my mind at the preparation for her aunts wedding reception in the hall at a water fountain and the trigger was her colorful dress seen in my most recent blog post of the girl with an umbrella. The dress had absolutely nothing to do with the story in the painting, but it served as messenger to my creative mind that the rest of the painting could exist.

Many times, the painting that exists was not the painting that first came to mind. The idea comes, and then it gets tweaked. That was the case with this illustration where I wrote the story specifically to put flesh on the bones of this concept. After I wrote the tale, I saw the picture. I felt the picture. When I painted it, I changed the vantage to fit the laws of presentation that conflicted with the laws of experience. In my minds eye, I was there, against the tree looking down, having just felt the tremor of the big cat as it lept up and clung to the trunk ready to race to an easy meal. Visually, I had to present more whereas in my mind, the intensity was stronger because of what I knew. I pulled back so you, the viewer, could see the hunter engaging his strategy to defeat the tiger.

Never underestimate the power of a snippet. It might only be the string you must follow.