Read the given pieces (yes, all of them), making notes as you go along. Write down keywords, ideas, images—anything that helps you capture the essence of the piece in one image. Remember that it's not just meaning—consider style and voice as much as you consider the concept.
Make as many thumbnail sketches as you can for each of the stories. For the next session make at least three sketches. You can do several texts if each one has the three sketches accompanying them.
"Where is your disposition?" she asked. "I do not know," I replied. "I do not think I have a disposition." Mother didn't think I had one either. I heard her discussing it with Father through the keyhole. "Evelyn" - that's me - "Evelyn seems to be totally without a disposition." And Father replying: "Have I a clean shirt for tomorrow?" He knew how to keep Mother in check by ignoring her nonsense. Father was a rock, and I loved him dearly. In the morning, watching him carefully as he shaved, I put it to him: "Where is my disposition?" He stopped shaving and looked straight at me. "It's in the bureau, the left hand drawer, and if I were you I'd leave it there." He decorated my face with his shaving cream and continued shaving, leaving me irritated but content.
An outburst of anger near the road, a refusal to speak on the path, a silence in the pine woods, a silence across the old railroad bridge, an attempt to be friendly in the water, a refusal to end the argument on the flat stones, a cry of anger on the steep bank of dirt, a weeping among the bushes.
I would leave everything here: the valleys, the hills, the paths, and the jaybirds from the gardens, I would leave here the petcocks and the padres, heaven and earth, spring and fall, I would leave here the exit routes, the evenings in the kitchen, the last amorous gaze, and all of the city-bound directions that make you shudder, I would leave here the thick twilight falling upon the land, gravity, hope, enchantment, and tranquillity, I would leave here those beloved and those close to me, everything that touched me, everything that shocked me, fascinated and uplifted me, I would leave here the noble, the benevolent, the pleasant, and the demonically beautiful, I would leave here the budding sprout, every birth and existence, I would leave here incantation, enigma, distances, inexhaustibility, and the intoxication of eternity; for here I would leave this earth and these stars, because I would take nothing with me from here, because I’ve looked into what’s coming, and I don’t need anything from here.
This is an appealing story.
One day, a hermit brother about to leave for town went to a brother who lived nearby and who had continual compunction. He said to his fervent neighbor, “Please do me the kindness, brother, of taking care of my garden until my return.” The other replied, “Believe me, brother, I will do my best not to neglect it.” After the brother’s departure, he said to himself, Now take care of this garden. And from evening until dawn he stood in psalmody, ceaselessly shedding tears. He prayed the same way for the entire day. Coming home late, the brother found that hedgehogs had ravaged his garden.
He said, “God forgive you, brother, for not taking care of my garden.”
The other answered, “God knows I did my best to keep it, and I hope through God’s mercy that the little garden will bear fruit.”
The brother said, “But it has been completely destroyed!”
The other replied, “I know, but I have confidence in God that it will flower again.”
But he was speaking of the effort of his continual tears, the weeping for one’s sins in the hope of salvation, and of the garden of his heart, watered by him and in full flower.
Take one of the sketches to the final. Much like in the previous assignment, take your time to figure out the style and execution, making sure it does justice to your concept.