The Giving Tree

Florence + The Machine - All This and Heaven Too

I was gifted a framed shadow box my freshman year of college.  When I moved out of the dorms I left it in my parents' apartment and it has been collecting dust ever since.  (This is obviously a sign that I refuse to throw anything away...hopefully, you won't see me on Hoarders 30 years from now). But I decided rather than letting it sit there, I would give it to my friend that just moved into her new place.

Ok, but let me make it clear I am not giving her the dusty frame with pictures from seven years ago. I dusted it and decided I would put new pictures in.  Here is evidence of what it used to look like (sans dust):

It is not an atrocity of nature or anything of the sort, but I figured if I am going to re-gift it I can at least add something new. I thought of drawing characters from books we use to read when we were children. And the first thing that popped into my head was Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree. I started browsing through images on google and came across an image of a tattoo... it had 3 different scenes from the book and I decided I would do something similar.

All I used for this project was index cards, a black sharpie, and markers. Here are pictures of my final result:

I tried to keep it simple by keeping the majority of it in black and white. I opted to use the color red to add a little something someting to it.

For those of you who haven't read The Giving Tree, here is a video of the book:

The Giving Tree - Shel Silverstein

I actually had to recite this book for a speech contest in elementary school. Before, I just thought, What a nice tree! After reading youtube comments... a good group of people thought the boy was selfish as well as other things,which I guess is slightly true. I started thinking about it more.. and I guess it signifies a type of parent-child relationship.... or maybe life in general in which people form relationships where there are givers and takers? Ah, who knows! I am trying to be too philosophical about a children's story book. Do you have a take on this book?