What is a skin?

David defined a skin as the state of a piece at any point where it could have been called “finished.”

The concept emerged sometime around 2011, and it was first exemplified in the piece Seven Cats:

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Photographing the process allowed David to save these moments, these points of convergence that occurred during his creative undertaking.

David was also careful to distinguish a step in the creation of a piece from a skin. Not all steps were worthy to be termed a skin. For instance, in Seven Cats David identified seven skins. Here, we represent 17 pictures, because we could not precisely pinpoint where one skin ended and the next one began. Before we can compile David’s descriptions of his pieces, our usage of the term skin will be somewhat loose and may encompass mere steps as well as proper skins. Inevitably, some pieces were left in between two skins in the end.

Another example of the difference between steps and skins is given by Battle Cry, where while we identified 9 steps, David only defined 3 skins.