Thesis Update!!

So it's been a while since I posted any thesis work. . .here is an update of what I've been working on. The colors are not final, but I wanted to start experimenting as I'm continuing to work on the next few pieces. The drawings are done in graphite, and the color is photoshop. I'm continuing to work on my novella, and my thesis imagery is starting to parallel the characters and motifs in my writing. I included a few excerpts of writing below that relate to the work.

Three weeks ago to the day the first sinkhole swallowed a house. It was the first house of many, but the ground in Fells had been bad long before then. If you took a cross section of the land and sliced it either way, you would find holes like swiss cheese, some of them a quarter mile deep. Gurgling up from these spaces there was water, a coppery red-orange sludge making a film across sluggish streams in low-lying areas. It flowed from cavities in the ground back where people rarely walked and dissipated itself invisibly into clearer rivers and swimming holes. The mountains near Fells High were not really mountains; they were massive piles of earth that had been dug up long before most of the residents were even born. But to most, especially the children, the piles were part of the natural landscape of Fells. It was hard to imagine watching a football game without the backlit silhouette of the piles looming in the distance, their dusty surfaces disrupted by playing children strong enough to reach the top.

For Adam and Dan and Isaac, the sinkholes were the beginning. They were the first violent strike by the ground, the most visible sign of aggression that was to build in the following months. There was no fear over the holes, and the thought that Mrs. Skinner’s fate was possible for of the boys’ houses never came into their minds. They were intrigued by the sudden awakening of the landscape, something they had always thought of as passive, asleep, and constant. Now the fine grains of chat that blew across the track on windy days were something to look twice at. The sweeping wave was searching for a place to rest, a yard to cover with a thin film like a morning frost.

******

They were down near the swimming hole now; Adam could sense the openness of the space, the shift in the sound of dirt under the tires traveled far away and did not return. Sleep was creeping over him even as he pressed his foot on the accelerator. His tongue was a warm, heavy stone in his mouth and his eyes felt as though they were sinking deeper into their sockets. His fingers were slightly numb and light as he turned the wheel to park. Dan and Isaac were already halfway out of the truck before it even stopped. The three of them stepped from the glow of the car into the night air. Adam slid the key ring into his pocket and followed Dan down the edge of the slope. The swimming hole lay dark and silent at the bottom of the hill. A milky circle of white was wavering on the surface of the black water like an alien pupil. Upon seeing it each boy felt a brief internal shudder that they masked from the others.

******

There was a weight to physicality, a price for the pleasure of flesh and blood. She was starting to feel the burden of carrying around bone with muscle, the strain of creaking tendons forever stretching and releasing. But there was something more: a new, foreign weight to her blood. Maybe it was a recent adoption or maybe it had always existed there, flowing without her notice until just this moment. She felt that if her finger was pricked and a small bead of red sprung from the point that the blood would be of a darker, more sinister hue. This image of dark, alien blood in her veins just made her heart pump it with more force. It was hammering at the walls of her temples now and draining from the tips of her fingers and toes, making them tingle. Where could she go now? Even as she slept this new presence would be exploring the cavities of her organs and pressing up against nail beds and peeking through the thin windows of capillaries. Even if she left this house and all her possessions, her body would not be entirely her own.