'Matite da paura' Illustration Contest - The black cat - Part 1 - Studies

Dec 11, 2017
3 min read

'Matite da paura' contest requires to create an image to illustrate the Edgar Allan Poe's masterpiece 'the black cat'.

The prize is a contract with Edizioni EL to illustrate several famous horror tales, rewritten for young readers (10/11).

I was a young reader myself when I first came across this masterpiece, and I was excited to rediscover it. My memories were faded, but the hit of fear and confusion I'd experienced while wandering in the dark world of Poe was still vivid. The tale itself is short and dense: a few words can often hide a wide range of information about this story of depression, alcohol abuse and extreme violence.

I preferred to start with the tale's original version to allow my diving to deepen in Poe's language and symbols.

I researched about the writer's life, discovering the events that tickled his fantasy: particularly interesting is the figure of his wife Virginia, who married Edgar as a teenager and died six years later, after an incredible long struggle with TBC.

Her agony forced Poe to a nightmarish daily routine run by fear and hope, ultimately destroying his already weak joie de vivre.

In that period he went back to alcohol with renewed desperation, waiting for his beloved wife's horrible death.

I've decided to gather my studies in a sketchbook in order to have a comprehensive view of them.

Sketchbook | selected pages

Notes, sketches and illustrations from Edgar Allan Poe's tale

'I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind.

We had birds, gold fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.

This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree.

In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise.

'Pluto — this was the cat’s name — was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house.

Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and character — through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance — had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse.

I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife.

At length, I even offered her personal violence.

My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when by accident, or through affection, they came in my way. But my disease grew upon me — for what disease is like Alcohol! — and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish — even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper.'

In the image I'm going to submit, I will focus on the parallel between the cat and the protagonist's wife: although the latter appears almost as a secondary character, the tale's theme is a feminicide.

Here's a rough sketch.