The Naughty Child/The Traveling Companion

The Naughty Child, while conjuring fantastic images of an aged pedophile taking a drenched and naked child in out of the rain, I was in no particular hurry to illustrate it. In fact, it became something of a roadblock, keeping me from this project for... *gasp*... three months now! For shame.

So I finally scribbled something that is not so much an illustration of the story itself, but kind of a silly reinvention of the iconic "cupid" character.

Sorrow and many a heartache

While I was on a roll, I managed to put down Murakami's Dance Dance Dance long enough to read The Traveling Companion. It inspired no shortage of images that I would love to put on paper - the glass-eyed, handlebar-mustachioed, wooden puppets were awfully tempting - but I couldn't say no to a princess' garden dripping with the skeletons of dead suitors.

It was really a doleful garden for a princess.