I had a picture of Tiny in my mind right from the start, but I drew him in words before I drew him with a pencil. The following is an extract from an earlier draft that introduces the reader to this ‘strange looking painter’ for the first time.
“Not very far away, a less cooperative kind of creature had just given someone a sore hand. It was a thin and bony hand, and from the look of all the blood, the injury seemed to be serious. The face beneath the tousled nest of hair looked at it with irritation and then glanced up.
Dappled light fell across his gaunt, downy features and made his jet-black eyes glisten. Like marbles dipped in tar, pupils totally eclipsed by the darkness around them, they glared at the thing on the wall and as they glared, his other hand rose above his shoulder holding a fully loaded paintbrush. Aiming it like a javelin, he lunged forward and landed a splat of red paint on the creature’s back. The long antennae attached to its almond-like head flicked around tetchily, but even with paint dripping down over its skeleton, the stubborn thing still refused to budge.
The strange looking painter scowled, and jammed the handle of the paintbrush between his lips, clamping it there behind two long incisors while he reached round to his back pocket for a rag. He wiped the red paint off his sore hand so that he could examine it more closely. Luckily, it was nothing more serious than a scratch, but those pincers were sharp and if he hadn’t reacted so quickly, they could have easily pierced through to the bone. These weren’t aggressive creatures though. They didn’t look too pretty and they had a nasty pinch but there was nothing particularly menacing about them. They were just annoying, that was all, and they always managed to get in the way.”
