Excerpt from “ENOCH: A Bigfoot Story”:
I asked him to look at the Patterson/Gimlin Film again, and sent him a link. “What do you think?”
“Whaddaya mean, what do I think?” he asked, still a little pissy with me. “What do you think? You’ve seen ‘em. That’s how a Bigfoot moves. That’s what a Bigfoot looks like. You know that. Why are people running around bitching about wanting a picture? They’ve got one.”
He didn’t have much else to say about Patty until I was trying to create the artwork for the cover of the book. We went back and forth, me sending him images and files of my attempts to depict Enoch just right and Mike getting more and more frustrated.
“Look, I told you. This is what he looks like: his head’s a little pointed – not like all those cone-heads people draw all the time. His ears stick out sometimes, just the tips, when his hair’s messed up a certain way. He’s got big bushy eyebrows, like Andy Rooney. His eyes are dark brown… you ever eat a Tootsie Pop? A chocolate one? You know how you get down about halfway, and you can see the Tootsie-Roll center? It’s… what’s the word…?”
“Striated?” I asked, tickled by his comparison.
“Yeah. Striated. Like that.”
I asked about the pupils.
“His pupils are like ours; depending on the amount of light, that’s what size they are. If it’s dark, they get real big. If there’s a lot of sunlight, they get smaller, but then he’s usually squinting. His eyes are all brown. The only time I see any whites is when he looks way off to the side. You know, like a dog’s eyes. But his eyes are deep.”
“Intense?” I asked.
“Yeah. Especially when he’s staring at me for a long time like he does. It’s almost like he’s getting ready to say something.”
“Ok,” I asked. “What else?”
“His nose is kind of broad and flat, but not like a gorilla’s with those big nostrils. He’s got these little pig bristles that stick out from it. And wrinkles. On the bridge, and down a little farther, too. His mouth is wide and his mustache is real thick, like it grows almost out of his nostrils. It covers his upper lip. His teeth are wide and flat. His beard grows all the way up to his cheekbones, but is a little sparser as it goes up. His mustache grows down the sides of his mouth and blends with his beard. His beard has kind of a goatee, a Fu-Manchu thing hanging down, about six inches long. His forehead has sparse hair on it that blends up into his hairline.”
I sent him drawing after drawing. None of them was close to Enoch.
“Ok, it’s easy. Look at Patty. See the hair growth on her face? Like that. See the shape of her head? See her face, her nose? Like that. She could be his sister. She’s the closest thing to what he looks like. And guess why? ‘Cause she’s a Bigfoot!”
I laughed. Fair enough.
When I wrote ENOCH, I skimmed over the actual process of creating the image for the cover. Apparently, however, the cover has created quite a stir and people are curious about how the image came to be.
Mike was reluctant to even attempt to provide a photograph of Enoch, for reasons discussed in the book. (I won’t go into those here… while some have criticized Mike’s decision, I agree with it and there’s little point in me rewriting that explanation here when it’s in the book. That’s why I wrote a book. So I wouldn’t have to keep repeating myself.) However, when I finally decided to write the book and Mike agreed to it, I was interested in attempting what might be considered a “forensic depiction” of Enoch.
I am not an artist. When I was a kid, I could draw well enough… for my age. I can stumble along and make a pretty good attempt, but it’s a little like someone trying to cook a souffle when they don’t know how to make a rue, or someone trying to write a song when they don’t know what a chord is. I don’t understand light, shadow, perspective… you get the drift.
But I didn’t need to. Scott Davis, an amazing artist who has worked with me for years and who has become one of my very best friends in the world, was willing to take a crack at it. Eager, in fact. But there was a problem… as I’d soon come to see.
Mike had repeatedly given me an intensely detailed description of Enoch’s face, hair, eyes… everything you might think you’d need to be able to draw Enoch. But trying to get someone to describe facial proportions accurately enough to actually depict an individual is more frustrating than I ever would have imagined.
I called Scott. Described Enoch to him based on Mike’s detailed description. Scott listened. Scott drew. Sent me his first crack at it (A). I sent it to Mike.
Mike’s exact words were: “It looks like Jerry Garcia.”
Oh lord. This wasn’t going to be pretty.
“Well, what’s WRONG with it?” I asked.
“Everything,” Mike said.
That was helpful. I had a choice. Laugh or cry. I took a deep breath and did neither. I could tell Mike was already in a mood and wasn’t long on patience with this little “project”. I explained how difficult it was going to be to get the actual proportions of the face right. Mike grumbled and vented. We were off to a roaring start.
I called Scott. “How did he like it?”
What could I say? “He said… it looked like Jerry Garcia,” I said. Miserably. I waited. It didn’t take long.
With Scott grumbling in one ear and Mike grumbling in the other, we tried. Over the course of a couple of weeks, both of them irritated and disgusted with one another and me in the middle… we tried. First, I sent Mike a drawing I did. (B) It was a little closer, he said. Then Scott took another crack at it. (C) Then another. (D) No matter how many times I explained it, he really didn’t have any place to start. Mike would get frustrated, yelling at me on the phone, because he was having to talk through me to someone else. “Look at Patty!” he’d holler. Then, he’d reiterate the same details he’d told me over and over again. The heavy brow. The pig bristles on the nose. The trouble was, I wasn’t able to find a way to take the words of someone who’d SEEN something and translate them in any way to an artist who hadn’t.
I took Scott’s drawing and modified it. (E) “How about this?” I asked Mike. “Is it any closer?”
“Yeah,” Mike said. “It’s a little closer. But the eyes are screwing me up. You got the eyes all detailed, no hair on the thing…”
I explained to Mike that Scott was trying to get the facial proportions right before he detailed the drawing, but it didn’t matter. They were speaking two different languages. Without much patience. With me in-between as the helpless, ineffectual translator.
I talked to Scott. Explained Mike’s details again. Delicately. Here I am, trying to deal with two guys who have blood pressure issues. I’m treading lightly.
Scott took another crack at it, this time in color. (F) Mike and I sat on the phone for a couple of HOURS, tweaking it. (H) We widened the face, the mouth, brought the brows down. I sent him image after image. Still no dice. “It just don’t look like him,” he said.
I understood what he meant. There was an element of humanness, yet a savage, animal-like element in the face I remember seeing as a child, that we simply weren’t capturing. Not to mention the difficulty of trying to use a middle man to adjust facial proportions. I knew that Scott might have a difficult time capturing that. He’s never seen one.
I decided to take a crack at it. I opened up Photoshop and did a digital piece using different textures.
I sent it to Scott. Though it was a rough, digital “sketch” that only took a short time to do and definitely was imperfect in a hundred little ways, I wanted to show him what I’d been after.
Then I sent it to Mike “How about NOW?” I asked him.
Closer, he said. But it looked like an Ewok. I agreed.
I tried again. (I) Apparently, now I was getting somewhere. We wrestled with the width of the eyes. (J) The skin tone. (K) Finally, I got as close as I’d come. (L) “His mustache still ain’t bushy enough. And give him back his eyebrows. He looks like Whoopi Goldberg.” These additional helpful comments from Mike helped to acheive the final result. (M)
This is how the face of Enoch came to be.
It is NOT, contrary to popular rumor-mongering over the last couple of days on public bigfoot forums, a “plagarism” based upon any other bigfoot drawing. It was arrived at INDEPENDENTLY by me, based upon Mike’s descriptions and detailed, involved direction, and I don’t appreciate having someone being given credit for MY work. Although I thought I’d made that clear, very politely yet firmly, to the individual who’d questioned me about it last Saturday, apparently someone else didn’t get the memo.
Finally, accusing someone of something that is untrue and which casts them in a negative light publicly, or even in private which is then made public, can be construed as defamation of character. The word “plagarism” is a pretty strong word that’s being tossed around with my name connected to it. “Rumor-mongering” is also known as libel when strong, negative, untrue connotations are at play. Libel is not only offensive; it’s often a tortious offense.
Look it up.
