The walk in the park series was my senior year's masterpiece. It took most of the semester and caused severe muscle and joint pain through my wrist, arm and shoulder! (I'm all better now).
Anyway, Walk in the Park is about more than just a walk in the park.
During the Fall of 2006, I was studying abroad in Japan. While there, I took the time to become more acquainted with the medium commonly known as the graphic novel. Even though I want to illustrate comics, I have had little exposure to them. Japanese comics are unique in how they use the visual image to immerse the viewer in the mood of the setting – everything about the image intentionally attempts to express and convey the feeling in the story. I wanted to try my hand at this kind of story telling.
The Walk in the Park series became a gamut of self-imposed problems and challenges. Every element had to be thoroughly planned and choreographed to fully stretch my capabilities and push me to the limit of all I could do.
This is the most complicated and in-depth piece of sequential illustration I have ever attempted, and it is this kind of work I would like to continue to pursue: ever challenging my abilities and pushing the limits of possibility.
Beyond challenging my abilities, the Walk in the Park series is also very personal. As you may have noticed, it is a continuation of a watercolor painting I created almost a year earlier titled “Self Portrait.” It is meant to be a description of who I am: not what I look like (I employ similar methods in many of my works). This series is an expansion of that concept.
While I was in Japan, I tried to come up with words to describe my style. The words I came up with were “Lighthearted Darkness.” This is where the concept of strangers in the park and three-headed dogs become less ominous. I have learned that life is full of imposing and serious matters, but all are surmountable with hope, joy, faith, and a bit of humor.
Page 1
This first page introduces us to the main characters: a boy named Higashi and his 3-headed beagle dog Cephyroth.
Page 2
Page two takes us along with our favorite characters on their walk... where they meet a rather imposing figure...
Page 3
Here we meet Argus the centaur. And the red balloon.
You may have noticed the red balloon in other of my works. Well, this it what it means. It's a symbol of the future and the unknown. And it's not just the balloon, but the act of taking the balloon and who it comes from that makes it symbolic. Argus is symbollic as a messenger: mysterious and intimidating at first, he turns into quite a surprising character.
Page 4
Meet Lilith, Argus' wife (a faun). She's the most outwardly light-hearted character of the story and birds always seem to be singing whenever she comes along. Enigmatically less symbolic than the other characters, she becomes more of a support character, complimenting the others, and making them more whole.
One question I haven't gotten much of is what the 3-headed beagle symbolizes. Well, it's long and complicated:
You'll remember from the piece called DOGFACE (etc) a character with the head of a dog. This is an actual medical condition (sort of) called Cynocephaly (my email address is cynocephaly@gmail.com). Cyno means dog, ceph means head. The three-headed beagle is named Cephyroth: a corruption of the name of the popular Final Fantasy VII character, Sephiroth- it's pronounced the same- but Sephiroth is actually a villain, and a pretty good one at that. And of course, the idea of the three-headed dog comes from cerberus, guardian of the underworld. Dogs are, in certain mythologies, something of a bridge between the temporal world and the after-life, and that's why they lick people (I can't remember exactly, go look it up on wikipedia like i did).
SO, with all that in mind, Cephyroth is a harmless beagle (in contrast to his namesake and the traditional cerberus), he's a happy-go-lucky, absent-minded, squirrel-chase-loving, boy's best friend kinda' dog. He may have three heads, but he's still one dog. It's a hard concept to grasp, but in honor of it's complexity, I've decided that Cephyroth is an illustration of the Holy Trinity concept (three parts, one whole): but Cephyroth is by no means divine. He's a dog.
The Walk in the Park series is for sale!
Each of the pages is matted and framed at a whopping 30"x40" (76cmx102cm), they are designed to stand alone, or look very snazzy side by side, with a few inches between them. They are not for sale seperately.
The 4-piece series is for sale at $1575 (plus shipping when applicable).
