Music Mosaic - The Photo Album

I have always been a fan of the heart-warming stuff. When I listen to the song "Stranger on the Shore", originally written and performed by Acker Bilk, I feel an incredible amount of love and innocence being expressed. For this project I could have gone with some sort of abstract pieces of art that somehow expressed all of that but I had a story that I wanted to tell. A story about a little girl who got an egg and, from that egg, found one of her closest friends.

One of the things that I got from the Dillard reading was that when people are introduced to a new way of seeing, they can reject the new way or they can embrace it. With the story I’m telling with my pictures, instead of dog, cat, or bird as a pet I wanted an animal of fantasy. I was inspired by my childhood fantasy, Pokémon. I mean who doesn’t want a companion like a Pokémon throughout life? I also thought about “How to Train a Dragon” as I was drawing this. The way the dragon “Toothless” appears and acts also inspired the scenes that I drew.

Having a pet is such an everyday thing that people sometimes take pets for granted. In my mind, replacing the traditional pet animal with something so outlandish brings a renewed vision of what it means for someone to have a pet. Maybe someone will revisit the time they first got their puppy and the joy they have from growing up with it.

The way I drew the images as photos, that really goes back to the song “Strange on the Shore”. It has a bit of a nostalgic tone. It’s looking back on cherished memories. Photos do that for me. Therefore, with each frame I wanted it to seem like there was someone taking a picture. When people make their photo album it very rare that they are looking back on bad memories. People generally choose the good moments to keep and share. The moments they can look back on after a rough day and smile on. I hope that I managed to achieve that photo nostalgia feel to some degree of that here.

As I said earlier, I also feel a great amount of innocence and love coming from this song. In each frame I wanted there to be some of that. At first we have just the girl being an innocent little girl. But as time passes the pet dragon-kangaroo thing is the innocent one and love is mutually shared between them.

Take what you will. You don’t have to like it but I feel accomplished. With a bit more polishing, this could be some very good stuff.