TINY STORIES

Andrew drew his bat

when he heard an intruders’s tap.

He was determined to get the criminal fox,

which was nothing but a cardboard box.

Sally did quiver and hide under her blanket 

when she heard an alien fluster inside her closet.

The nanny had quite a fright

when she thought she heard a rattle snake,

but it was only a baby’s rattle which did shake. 

As Billy heard the bush tremble he imagined a bear among the floral.

He never realized it was but a lonely squirrel.

Two travelers in the red hills

heard a thudding which gave them chills. 

It sounded like the pounding of the heart beat

of the legend dragon, and thus the travelers did retreat. 

Artist's Statement

          The Dillard’s “Seeing” reading demonstrated that we don’t always truly see what is before us. I feel this also applies to sound. We don’t always hear what we think we hear. For my tiny stories I wanted to tell stories in which the character/s think they know what they are hearing but their guess isn’t necessarily correct. 
          I wanted to base the stories in reality so I based most of the stories on true stories of my own experience or on stories I had heard. The first story was based on a story I had heard from my friend Andrew. The second story is based on my own childhood experiences of believing there was an alien in my closet. The fourth story was inspired by the squirrel from the movie, The Emperor's New Grove. And the final story is base off some extended family of mine who believe one can hear the heart beat of a dragon at the entrance of a cave in Southern Utah. By basing the stories in some reality I was hoping to make them more relatable. 

When coming up with the stories I realized that many of the dealt with fear as the driving force to let the mind wander to extravagant possibilities. Therefore, one theme of these stories is that fear will lead one to accept scenarios one wouldn't normally expect or accept. 
          I decided to illustrate the stories through sketches so that I might fully illustrate the images which I see in my mind when I think of these stories. Also, I decided not to have any color since the aspect of fear is part of several of the stories. The that grey images of the sketches are better suited for portraying fear than a colored illustration would have been.