This was an "unconscious" drawing done as an attempt to free myself up for a cover portrait of John Cheever for the NYT Book Review.

After being intimidated by a blank sheet of paper and the prospect of having to produce a drawing worthy of a cover... I resort to just "playing" around on any scrap paper regardless of whether I've already drawn on it. It's a game I need to play with my head to avoid being too uptight. In this case, I liked what was happening. The overlapping/muliple heads seemed to work with the fact that Cheever was a very complicated and tortured soul. Fortunately (to my surprise) the AD, Nicholas Blechman and the editors agreed. After some tweaking of the image to make it work better for a cover... it ran.