My contribution to James Gurney’s latest “Art by Committee” challenge. The assignment was to illustrate the following extract from a science fiction novel manuscript:

This one was a great learning exercise from a composition point of view, driving me to rough out several possible scenes before finally choosing a close-up of Billy’s face — and even then I experimented with just how close the close-up should be. Billy, I thought, is a man trying bravely to cope with an unanticipated glacier of indifference from a formerly close female friend. And this being the near-future, he’s staring into the unforgiving lens of a laptop camera while he wages this internal struggle.

Yet another argument against videophones, in my opinion. Dating is hard enough without that.