…is the name of today’s story at Fictive Dream.
Throughout the month of February 2023 I will be showing you illustrations I did for Flash Fiction February 2023 at Fictive Dream, an online magazine devoted to the short story.
Here’s the image editor Laura Black chose for this story, All in Her Head, by Mary Grimm.
And here is the artwork with the banner. Take a look at this image. And then…
Read the story at Fictive Dream.
Claudia McGill and Her Art World 
All in Her Head by Mary Grimm is a powerful story that deals with a woman’s painful and distressing feelings. There’s utter chaos in the protagonist’s mind and today’s illustration reflects this so well. The muted palette is suggestive of an unhappy existence, the scribbles indicate the emotional chaos, and the splashes of red, perhaps a backward glance to past events. Beautiful, Claudia, thank you.
This image has no strong focus and the viewing eye goes all over it – and the colors kind of merge one into another being similar in tone and value. The wavy black border gives a sense of enclosure to the image and keeps it on the page rather than having a sense of going beyond the paper. As always, a bit of contrast in the red and black splatters gives a sense of depth and keeps the picture from being too disorganized to make any sense. I think these elements go well with this story of mental and emotional processes inside a mind.
I like the way your illustration captures both the exterior and interior landscape that the narrator is experiencing. I see the long grass dotted with wildflowers but I also see the collision of memories, experiences, thoughts that the narrator is experiencing, the scribble texture suggestive of her emotional turbulence, and the red spatter some of the distressing events of her past she is processing.
Thank you. This picture hasn’t got a strong focus and I think that is why it works (with the addition of the splatters to add some color and pattern contrast). And I think scribbles always introduce an elements of, maybe not frantic, but maybe disorganized energy – combined with these colors, not positive energy, I feel. I also like the wavy black border, it encloses and or maybe it is what the other image is layered on? I like the effect of it.
I love that painting in and of itself. The way it captures the landscape of the story, inner and outer, is just right. I’ve written many an unsent letter in a similar vein myself, although never as fraught. (K)
Thank you. I like the way this one turned out. It’s colors I don’t often use but I have seemed to be doing so more lately, and I like the look of them. Especially with the red and black accents. I’ve never used writing to express feelings like this, as far as a letter – I never get that far, I just seem to think them – but I can see how it would be good to write them down even if not sent.
You really know how to use the paint dots/splatters in your compositions. They work so well!
Thank you. I think spattering is an underrated tool in the artist’s box – they are subtle and small but they give so much liveliness and motion to a composition, and they break up or unify as needed. Kind of spatter magic!