...I saw her once, very briefly, but she was the kind of person you remember; much shorter than you'd think but a large cloud of hair and something intense, sort of piercing way deep down in her eyes. So to a small but important extent I could work from this flash of a memory, but it was mostly newspaper clips for the proportions -- I remembered the hair as rather reddish but the clips were black and white, so I let the ink dance its dance of sorrow, soon adding thin strokes of bitter red.
The portrait was intended for something vaguely autobiographical with a widened scope. For I was stuck in something far less murderous, but otherwise similar -- there was me, a girlfriend, her family etc. etc. and thus our little circus played a part in this huge, nationally neglected mess of dishonourable honour -- a good and personal reason to write a book.
And I wrote it.
It turned out that no publisher in Sweden dared to touch it. The manuscript (rewritten to pieces between the refusals) is gone now and my little story untold; it doesn't quite matter today when new scandals in the same vein surface every now and then.
Ink, aqua and extra thick colour for the sad glint in her eye. It took time to make water pigments this muddy and opaque but it was well worth it. Nowadays, I would've used ready-made gouache. And would never have tried to write a book, now when there are so many digital options. Rest in peace, brave soul. This humble blog post is for you.