Drawings

A Wild Mess

A series of illustrations for a poem by my friend Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi about his mother.
I wanted to capture the moment where the Hen character gathers her memories or feathers as they flutter away in a wild mess. The Hen is a symbol for Kiik's mother, and maybe Kiik sees this desire to cherish and maintain her memories and relationships as defying mortality. To me it is equal parts tender, tenacious, and futile. I explored a lot of styles: cartoony, silly, sketchy, colorful and patterned. Looking back at the images I feel that the gestural work done in fountain pen connects most closely to the words.