Day 7

Made it one whole week! Maybe this will stick!

There is some TERRIBLE parenting in these stories.

This story starts off oddly anti-primogeniture, which is…progressive. But the king’s solution to the potential birth of a girl is to build 12 coffins for his existing sons. Mom isn’t into this plan & gets the sons to skip town. Which apparently dad doesn’t notice? Or maybe he doesn’t care. See? Bad parenting times two right there!

Then the daughter goes looking for her brothers (once she learns of their existence after some long lost laundry turns up). Does anyone go looking for any of these children? Nope!

The (non-titular) daughter is described more than once as having a star on her forehead. An odd inclusion that has no bearing on the story. It makes me wonder if this was originally a different or longer take. Or is that something lost in time & translation.

After I did this one I thought ‘I should have given the crows beaks.’ But after leaving it a little longer, I think beak-less was, in fact, the better choice. They look more like shadow-people this way.

My first pencil lines included the sister and the old woman who appears to say three lines of exposition then vanish again, but I think this composition, with the abandoned basket in the foreground and the hit still lit, has more foreboding potential.

I might try to work this one up over the weekend. It’s one that could play with textures, light, and shadow.