UNFINISHED PROJECT - ABANDONED NOVEMBER 2009

Eager to hone their skills, Michelangelo and Donatello challenge each other to a training fight, with the loser facing a forfeit.

The question is, who won?

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Anyone who has seen either of the Great Unfinished Collections in my scraps (Vol I and Vol II) will know that I always have a lot of works in progress which I am yet to complete. This is the first of three abandoned pieces of artwork which I have now decided to upload in their unfinished states as I no longer plan on finishing them in their current forms.

This is the oldest of my unfinished pictures which I largely ceased work on in - wait for it - November 2009. More than five years ago. It is Panel 1 in the first volume of my Great Unfinished Collection.

To most folks, it probably looks like it could pass as a finished piece of work. In truth, this was meant to be just one panel of a five-panel piece depicting a whole load of foot worship activity. However, I ran into a series of problems with it which caused me to halt working on it, and I ultimately never made any further progress.

The first problem was the size of the picture. I was still using my old Windows XP computer when I created this piece, and I forgot to resize the scanned drawing before I started colouring and shading it. The file became so large that Paint Shop Pro would crash every time I attempted to open it on my old PC. Any attempt I made to resize it outside of Paint Shop Pro with the software I had at the time either damaged the quality of the picture or merged all the layers together, hampering my work with it.

By the time I bought my new faster PC in 2011 and was finally able to get this file open again, more than 18 months had passed and my skill level had changed. Looking at it afresh, I noticed a number of aspects of the drawing that I was unhappy with, most of which would've required me to completely redraw sections and start the whole picture all over again. The thought of having to start over was not one I particularly relished, and consequently the entire project went dormant. For the record, I never even put pencil to paper on any of the other four panels either.

In recent years I haven't given much thought to the Turtles, though they have crept back into my thinking in the last few months and I am inclined to try drawing them again soon. However, even though I don't wish to revive this project in its current state, I am likely to explore some fresh ideas which cover similar themes.

So TMNT foot fans, watch this space.

RRRex