Update 3/6/21 – I posted this painting on Social Media and since it was so public I thought it might be kind to find the woman I drew. I had her company email address so I went on Facebook and found someone with her name who worked at that company. I friended and messaged her, letting her know about the painting having finally been finished.
She wrote back saying she loved the painting and lo and behold, even though I had no idea when I wrote it, the thought bubble and text bubble were perfect representations of what she had been going through at the time, which was a time of great indecisiveness (I don’t know) leading up to a final bout of clarity (I know) that allowed her to break up with her BF of four years and start a new life!
I drew this woman at a Starbucks in Tulsa, OK in 2019 before the Covid 19 pandemic hit. I drew it on Watercolor paper instead of in my sketchbook, hoping one day to find the time to actually paint it. I finally found time in 2020-2021.
I had drawn in the two thought bubbles early on and ignored them until I was done painting. I liked the idea of her thinking one large bubble worth of thoughts and then editing it down into a smaller bubble. My original idea was she would be writing a story and I even wrote a segment of a murder mystery and it’s edited version but didn’t like the vibe of it so never wrote it in.
Finally I went with what I was thinking at the time, which was, ‘I don’t know’. Once I finished the large thought bubble it made sense to have her typing out the exact opposite of her ‘I don’t know’ doubts, just like so many of us do on a daily basis.
Painting © 2021 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com