A Tragedy in Two Thumbs: A Junior Narrative Illustration by Katherine Boussse (2018)

My English flash fiction story that served as the inspiration for this illustration was about a thumb wrestler named Boris. Boris dreams about winning the Nation Thumb Wrestling Championships, and does nothing but train nonstop for this competition. However, his dreams are dashed one day when, imagining himself winning the competition, he accidentally runs into a rusty staple and has to get his thumb amputated.

To create this illustration, I began with sketching out my ideas for which animals would best represent Boris. Afterwards, I picked pictures of the animals I chose in the correct poses and used the Pen tool to create the outline of the hybrid. I made the background with one-point linear perspective. To select what animals I included my hybrid, I considered my character's personality and traits. In the end, I decided on a hermit crab, to represents his reclusive personality, a cheetah, to represent his speediness, and a gorilla, to represent his great strength and opposable thumbs. The background of the picture is a wrestling ring, inside a gym. On the wall of the gym is a poster for the competition Boris dreams to win. I chose a wrestling ring because it seemed like the perfect place to host a thumb wrestling competition, and added the poster on the background to make the thumb wrestling theme clear. Overall, I’m very pleased with my work, especially because it took a lot of time to complete. However, if I were to do it differently, I would add more details to my background to create a more realistic scene.