Illustration Friday: Faded

This week's word on www.illustrationfriday.com was "Faded" and feeling rather adventurous, I figured I'd give it a bash.

Regardless of what subject matter I was bound to land upon, I knew from the beginning that I wanted to do something in the style of an authentic children's book (I've been toying with this notion for a few years now, so decided to seize upon this opportunity to achieve it).

So what did I draw? As you can see it appears to be a cat, although I will grant you that in the first picture it looks more like a Koala bear with horns. The concept? Well, the back-story I envisioned was that this would be the page from a book where the story is about a cat whose owner (the "Old Lady") has mysteriously disappeared (the subtext being that she has died) and the narrative would unfold through the eyes of the friendly-but-naive cat protagonist named Fred. At the end of the story he could've ended up moving to another home, maybe somebody else within the family, etc, but details are not particularly vital where unwritten stories are concerned so at this point I leave the story's resolution to the exclusive discretion to your imagination.

The image...well I've played with it for a few hours now, and I've finally decided to cut it loose. It's no masterpiece, but I'm content to let it out into the world as one of my experimental pieces. In it, we see Fred seeking out some photographs on the wall of his house because he misses the Old Lady and wants to see her. The discerning adult will hopefully detect that he's looking at a picture of himself on the Old Lady's lap, completely unaware that around him is a veritable photographic journey old the Old Lady's entire life (sitting on a wall in a school uniform, with her husband when they were young, holidays abroad, first baby pics, middle age, etc and all positioned around a masterly clock to denote the passage of great lengths of time). The sorrowful core of this is that Fred has no way of understanding what he's looking at, no way of knowing that he seemingly came into the Old Lady's life at the end as a humble comfort to a lonely widow, and he himself in turn has now been left behind.

Style-wise, I've already determined that I shall attempt a similar approach with next week's word, and I already eagerly await it's release with great anticipation.

So how are you?

Jim