"Indigo Man" by Troy's Work Table. Carport chalking for Friday 09 January 2015.
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Like Anton, Indigo Man is a character in The Nightingale's Stone by David Mecklenburg. Unlike Anton, however, the Indigo Man is a human, although a human who has been battered and abused and marginalized. He has found his place in the world, even if it is a liminal zone—working as a dyer of cloth in a birch forest.
His world is one scented with the piss used to activate the indigo and one of loneliness. He has been cast aside in some sense, but he is no monster. The difficulty of drawing him was in drawing his "deformities," thrust upon him by an abusive father, while allowing him to maintain some dignity.
As I read the novel, Indigo Man feels wild to me, perhaps even mostly naked. Perhaps only wearing stained breeches. But there is actually nothing in the text to support such a conclusion. So, I decided to draw him in sixteenth-century peasant garb. I think it a nice counterpoint to his "ruined sockets," "mushroom nose," "broken jaw," "harelip," "scarred cheeks," "shredded drum-skin of his face," hand that dangles uselessly, and "bandy legs." For me, it makes him less monstrous. Or, as the novel has it: "He was no monster, but only the culmination of mankind." (134)
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You can view more pictures of Indigo Man HERE.
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