Druuna (1987)

In the following year, I came across a godawful Italian comic, but one image stayed in my head. This picture was far more detailed then the Black Flag poster, so there was no way I could use paper and scissors. Sticking to the same general concept, I used thin cardboard on which I glued a strongly enlarged copy of the original picture. The original was approx, 3 x 5 cm. The template was 50 x 70 cm. As far as I can remember, I worked about 2 months on it with stencil knives, mostly in the evenings. I went through 2 - 3 blades per evening, and I had to wear tape around my fingers. It was rather painful. But I still have the template, 22 years later, so the general idea must have been right.

The problem here was: how could I make the template adhere tightly enough to the undergroud so the picture would not come out all blurry, but with these razor-sharp borders between colour and no-colour that I had liked so much about the Black Flag picture? Glue would mean the loss of the template after the first attempt, and just laying it on the canvas (cardboard, actually), produced poor results. The solution was, quite simply, to use needles. I pinned the picture with about 50 needles to the cardboard, and the resulting picture knocked me clean off my feet. I just could not take my eyes off them, and I could not stop making more and more pictures. I have only two left now, gave away the others. Probably my friends thought, this boy must go out more often.

Druuna: Detail from the template

Druuna: Spraypaint / Black cardboard, 50 x 70 cm