Circa 1982. Right before I began my fascination with art it was hot and muggy, but then again, I just described most every day in the Dominican Republic. My sister and I were just told that our mom would be traveling to New York. We were to stay in DR and await our visas. "What the hell does that even mean?", were probably the words that must've danced in my head at that age. I'm sure it was explained to me in more detail because somehow I recall understanding that we were not going to see our mom for a while.
We were to stay with some distant cousins, (this is all the info I got later on in life after asking who the hell those people were). Why couldn't we stay not with closer family members? My mom believed my sister and I to be a set, akin to Batman and Robin, Hawk and Dove, Tom and Jerry, Abbott and Costello. You get the idea, right? So, she didn't want to separate us while she was going to be away, and every close family member she asked could only handle one of us at a time. Even though my mom was to send money to them for our care taking, it was probably too much for any one of them to take on two more kids. More on this next time when I continue the story.
It may seem like there are so many characters in this poster and how the heck could I tackle all of them by myself? It's easier when you are drawing digitally and using layers. I am able to can draw each character in separate layers and move them around until I get the composition that works for me, although I start with an initial composition in mind and have a rough sketch of what I want it to look like, sometimes things don't always wind up the way you intend them. Bob Ross called it "Happy little accidents".
