Illustration Notes for Episode Sixty-Four

This week’s image—like this week’s episode—is about Matt’s new acquaintances on the Avenue and their world, which finally begin to pry his attention from his own plight and awaken him to some larger panorama than his own life story.

I don’t know whether anyone else out there is starting to feel like Friday comes every two or three days now—but I am! Too many things to juggle in too small a space left me needing to cobble together and draw over various ‘stock photo’ components again this week, adding only tweaks of my own. But the resulting image has turned out to be one of my favorites so far—in both intentional and completely serendipitous ways.

To begin with, I really like how the bill of this ‘spanger’s’ baseball cap, protruding from underneath his hood, makes it seem at first glance as though he has no face. I don’t need to spell out the pitch-perfect meta-content there. I’m also really happy about his attention to the book in his hands—both as evidence of inner thought life and literacy, and for the way his absorption in this solitary, introspective task contrasts with the engagement and communication with others invited by the signage I’ve invented for him—which he clearly isn’t expecting any time soon—if ever. This tension between needing to engage people and withdrawing and defending against them all at once seems fundamental to the life these characters live.

I added the wall mural behind the boy to convey additional ‘subtext’ regarding the contrasts between his subjective inner narrative and his objective outer circumstances, but I was also delighted by the completely accidental way that the word ‘Peace’ just happens to line up with the episode title as one scrolls down the page, to read, “Episode Sixty Four Peace”—as in ‘for peace.’ For a fairly slapdash ‘illustrative decoration,’ I think this one really fell together as nicely as a ‘visual poem’ about the episode’s themes. Or at least, that’s my ‘subjective inner narrative.’ :] As always, yours may differ.

I wish each of you safety, health, and some peaceful space—inside or out—in which to find refuge at some point every day amidst all that we are navigating. Until next week, be kind to anyone you can, including yourselves. :]

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As always, find an uncropped and uncluttered version of this week’s episode image below.