#48: Faded

It's a childhood memory he chases. The image that sticks is faded, as if were an actual photo from the seventies. The colours mottled in that orange hue that seeps over his earliest recollections.

Flipping the page, he begins again. He's been trying to draw this one image his entire career. The large sweep established the form, and he feels confident about the shape. He can bring this much to the page with his eyes closed.

Her face, as it looks down at him with kindness, is where the memory has faded. Her eyes, brown with flecks of green, are an imported image, something taken from actual photos of his mother. These show her with friends, all with long hair and smoking joints and listening to music. She was a flower child ripped from life too young.

Or at least he likes to think so.

He stops, withdraws the pencil from the page. Yes, he thinks. This is the shape of her eyes.

Finally, he has captured her look, the tender way it observes the viewer, in this case the babe, him, in her arms. There is a sadness to the love she shows. As if she knows she'll not see her son grow up to be an artist who spends his time trying to capture that moment.

He is happy to have the eyes. Enough, he says to himself. He has the next twenty years at least to find the curve of her smile.