Monday, August 17, 2009

The Judge's Waiting Room

Here's another illustration from the Annathena project.
One of the challenges to illustrating this story was that, other than the principle character, Annathena, the other main characters, the Judge, the Mayor, the Teacher and the Lawyer, and a secretary had to remain gender neutral so the reader could imagine them as either man or woman. When I was trying to imagine the pictures one might find hanging in a Judge's office, I thought it would be logical to find a portrait - but I couldn't reveal whether the judge was a man or woman. Hmm?
I came up with the idea of a portrait of just the judges arm swinging a gavel. At this moment in time Maurice the parrot is causing a disturbance. The secretary (out of frame) is swinging a broom at him. The man on the right who was coincidentally reading Tropical Bird Digest is acting quite startled, as is the woman on the left, but it also appears she could be disturbed by the gavel swinging down on her from the picture, or perhaps the bee buzzing around near the ceiling, which has developed an attraction for the flowers on Annathena's hat. There's a lot going on in this picture and I had a lot of fun making it.

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