Coin's Anatomy

This is the first triptych I've ever done. I didn't even know what a triptych was, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triptych) until one of my coworkers suggested that I turn the two pictures I had done into a series of three.

The first picture was this guy with the coins for eyes, and I drew it because when I inherited my desk from the previous owner they left this big bag of coins. I was looking at those and at the scratch pad I had on my desk and I just started playing around tracing the quarters. Then I thought I might be able to draw the buffalo on the back of the quarters well enough to pass for an actual life-size drawing of a quarter.

I think the thought came to me because I'd be talking a lot about the word buffalo with a co-worker, how, "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." Is a grammatically correct english sentence that means something like Bison from Buffalo, New York, who are intimidated by other bison in their community also happen to intimidate other bison in their community.

I have also been trying to draw things that look like the things they are supposed to be lately, what I mean by that is, I've been trying to draw better. Anyhow after the first quarter was done I thought I'd make a face out of the whole thing.

The paper I was using was a re-used scratch pad made out of old scripts from the show I work on. If you didn't know, TV shows do a ton of revisions on scripts as they go from the initial drafts all the way through production and each new draft or set of revised pages is printed on a different colored paper so that at a glance you can see what draft you have. The script writing is on the back of each of these pictures so it adds another layer of "art," for the discerning viewer like a picture of George Washington with a piece of the constitution on the back of the canvas.

I won't name the show I work on for fear of violating the non-disclosure agreement I signed but based on the name they stamped on the scratch pad I bet you can figure it out. For my purposes the show name seemed to lend itself to the theme of the triptych I had started...ANATOMY...more specifically, the anatomy of the coins that had inspired the project in the first place.

So you can see how the other two pictures came about rather quickly after I had figured out the form and tone of the project. I do this stuff a lot at work when I have down time, I like to draw pictures from the materials at hand and this is pretty much the pinnacle of that methodology for me. There seem to be two categories of people when you show them something like this, they either say, "Wow somebody has too much free time on their hands," or "Neat." What was your first thought?