May 20th, 2010
Détective Noir et La Trapèze by Ryan Licata
He awoke tied ten feet off the ground to one of the poles in her act, his head aching, and, the worst of it, his coat missing. A spotlight came on, blinding him. Shielding his eyes he spotted her, in penumbra, a tightrope away, her long, shapely legs glitzy in tights stretching out from under his coat. Then the spotlight took to her completely. And she stepped out, onto the rope, her balance out-of-this-world, loosening a button with every step she made, until, by the middle of her act, she was done with it. He marvelled, as his coat fell.
March 11th, 2010
Détective Noir et Crimespassionnels by Ryan Licata
Her heavy goons in the alleyway had left him without a single slug, while she’d be packing that piece, neat and compact, under her skirt. Backstage, her name was emblazoned on a door under a paling gold star. Inside, she sat at her dressing table, looking at him through her mirror, mascara streaking to the corners of her mouth. She stood up, turned and slowly hoisted up her skirt, showing what she had every intention of using against him. “Shows over sweetheart,” he said, but as she entwined her feather bower around his neck, he found it all beginning again.
Notes:
usually I am really rational about my artistic decisions. This time I just followed an impulse. This is the result of it. Somehow it looks like it could have been taken out from a 70s comic mag, which I find somehow fitting… or don’t you?
February 18th, 2010
Détective Noir by Ryan Licata
From his ninth storey window the city lights, on and off, created a mosaic against the night. He swigged neat whiskey from a tumbler, staring in at all those well-lit apartments. In rooms and kitchens, against curtains drawn, he could see the cut-out silhouettes of people having their parties. Women, their necks thrown back, mouths agape, laughing their heads off; and men, hanging up their dinner jackets, loosening their neckties, smoking short-cropped cigars. He smoked one himself, raised his drink. Let them have their fun with the lights on, for later, in the dark, he knew it would be murder.
Notes
This is the first Detective Noir story by Ryan Licata, the first one he wrote, (I had published the second one, Detective Noir et la Chatte, already some time ago here). It was his idea that the detective should looks somehow like me. I will do the whole bunch in the next weeks, they make up a nice little series inside his hundred word stories.
December 17th, 2009
Detective Noir et La Chatte by Ryan Licata
He had dimmed the lamps, lowered the Venetian blinds, closed for business, but she’d come up the fire escape and in through the window; the way his cat did. Seeing her there, standing over him, wearing a slender, black dress, a white patch, an orchard pinned, upon her breast, he saw that she was like his cat in other ways too. He tried to stand up from his swivel chair, but she pushed him down. The chair held them both, pawing and purring, as she curled up on his lap. Yes, curiously, she was like his cat in many ways.
Notes
There’s a couple of interesting stories around this illustration. The first one is about the story. At one point Ryan told me he had this image in his mind of a noir detective and that noir detective had my face. So I tried to draw myself as that character. I see this as a first try, probably other versions will follow. The other thing is, that when I started drawing this, the ink cartridge of my Pentel Pocket Brush ran dry and the strokes became rough and dirty. Usually I would have stopped and replaced the cartridge, but I liked the effect so I just kept on drawing. And somehow the image turned to to be someting really unusual for me, but also something I really like. I will have to work on this style some more…
And since I really liked the original drawing here it is, unplugged and unphotoshopped.
