I had been listening to the Handsome Family a lot lately, and found the imagery in the song 'My Sister's Tiny Hands' very inspiring. The lyrics tell a very clear story, so I decided to tell that in a series of illustrations!
We came in this world together Legs wrapped around each other My cheek against my sister's We were born like tangled vine |
We lived along the river Where the black clouds never lingered The sunlight spread like honey Through my sister's tiny hands |
But while picking sour apples In the wild waving grasses Sister stumbled in the briar And was bitten by a snake |
Every creature casts a shadow Under the sun's golden fingers But when the sun sinks past the waving grass Some shadows are dragged along |
Alone, I took to drinking Bottles of cheap whiskey And staggering through the back woods Killing snakes with a sharpened stick |
But still I heard her laughing In those wild waving grasses Still her tiny hands went splashing At the river's sparkling shore |
So I took my rusty gas can And an old iron shovel I set the woods to burning And choked the river up with stones |
This is something I've been working on from time to time since our trip to Mexico (!!). I spent ages sketching, made four drawings in one day, waited for a few weeks, made two more and finally finished the last one last night. These are a bit more complex than the other song illustrations I posted. Every piece is still hand cut, but the different layers of colour were glued to separate pages and put together in Photoshop. This gives the effect of layers of colour instead of pieces of paper glued on top of each other! I also desaturated some of the colours to get a more muted effect.
I'm going to see this band live tomorrow night and I'm really excited about that! Here's the song if you want to give it a listen:
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