A WOMAN’S WORK IS NEVER DONE
date - February 2001 / November 2001
medium - ink, pencil and Prisma color pencil
size - 11” x 17”
surface - Académie Heavyweight Sketch Paper

THE STORY BEHIND THE PICTURE : In February of 2001 I sat down at my drawing table with the intention of drawing a picture with a background, something I rarely ever did before this time. I had no idea what I was going to draw, I just knew I wanted to try my hand at a background and see what I could come up with. I started to draw a woman’s face, turning over her shoulder and looking back, and before long I had started to draw a muscular shoulder and back and outstretched arm. This of course fell in line with my fascination with muscular women, so that didn’t come as a surprise to me that I wound up going that route.

However, just as soon as it had started, it stopped. I lost interest in the project, and for the most part drawing, and stepped away from the drawing table for almost an entire year, never once sitting back down to continue with where I had left off or even to draw a single line here or there.

Come November the world had changed dramatically. With 9/11 only 2 months old I felt as though I had to delve into something I knew would be an outlet for me during those uncertain and strange times, and there she was staring over her shoulder wondering when I was going to finish her. The picture had developed a layer of dust during that time, so I cleaned the paper off and sat down and went to work on finishing the piece up. The dragons and the Minotaur, of which I had never drawn either before, were inspired by the creatures in the book 'Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual Core Rulebook III' (Wizards of the Coast, Inc. © 2000 - First Printing). The background just came out of my mind and onto the paper as I was trying to do something that looked normal, yet not.

To this day this piece is a popular one among females, as it depicts a strong woman (muscular or not) overcoming the odds and ready to take on even more to come. I never planned it that way, it just happened. Which is something that art should do on it’s own, not because the artist manipulated the audience into that way of thinking.

- please be aware that this is a reposted image and not a brand new deviation

UPDATE: This is a much larger version, taken from the file that was created from a rescan to be used in the dA shop.