'Life, Interrupted'

A few days before the Star Trek convention that I recently attended, I decided I should sketch something for Joel Gretsch to sign. A few weeks ago, I started watching "The 4400," so I sketched the scene at the end of an episode called "Life, Interrupted," which features a fateful encounter between Gretsch's and Karina Lombard's characters.

The drawing was only half-finished when I had Gretsch sign it, but he seemed to like where it was going. He also mentioned that this episode is his favorite of "The 4400."

At that time, I had sketched (in ink) only the torsos of the two characters. Later I decided that, for consistency with some other drawings that I will display alongside this one, the figures should extend all the way to the border of the paper. It was tricky trying to make that happen when the tops of the figures were already committed to ink, but I went ahead with it (that's the finished version above). When I was done, I was a little uncomfortable with the proportions on his character, and I sort of wished that I had stayed focused just on their torsos (like the cropped version below). I also think that in the cropped version, it's more clear that he is a few paces behind her. However, in the full finished version I do like the way the belt on her trenchcoat came out.