This is the original sketch for the ape in the page spread below. I really like this drawing, it has a lot of character and its one of my favorite drawings of the ape I ever did.

Now that I'm older I'm prepared to live with the work I've done previously which I could not do in the past. I used to draw something and within days decide that it was no good. I'm more inclined to the idea that a drawing is more like a moment in time, it is what it is and doesn't have to stand up to anything else that you do, now, later or before.

What I mean by that is that a drawing exists in two ways, as an expression of an idea in a given place in time and as a memory of an expression of an idea that occured independent of time.

Basically, a piece of art is just that, a piece. A finished image is only a snapshot of a thought that was followed through from an idea or concept, each stage is as valid as the original, or the final destination. Whether you're prepared to look back on your own work and decide that you like, or no longer like it is irrelevant to the position of the artwork in your previous existence. It may as well have been done by a different person, it was in fact done by a different person, namely you aged 30, or 25 or 20. As we age we grow and change and the art that we produce may not have a particular relevence to you now, at this point in time, but it has a relevence to a history of you and unto itself for no other reason than it exists. Get it? Its like the difference between a blade of grass and a lawn, both might achieve the same thing, but a lawn isn't measured by one blade of grass and a blade of grass isn't measured by a lawn. They each exist within their own framework and dimension, related though they are, and so each exists for its own sake and unto itself.