Richard Parker

Dana Martin Art
4m ·
RICHARD PARKER
from Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Four days in and I ended up doing most of this one in Procreate; the ellipse tool and texture brushes were too handy to pass up.
Pi Patel is crossing the Pacific with his family and their zoo animals when their ship explodes and swiftly sinks. Pi makes it to a life boat but he is the sole human survivor, and when he sees the Bengal tiger, Richard Parker, struggling through the waves, he tosses the life buoy to him, only considering later what it will mean to be stranded on the ocean together:
"Most likely the worst would happen: the simple passage of time, in which his animal toughness would easily outlast my human frailty. Only if I tamed him could I possibly trick him into dying first, if we had to come to that sorry business.
But there’s more to it. I will come clean. I will tell you a secret: a part of me was glad about Richard Parker. A part of me did not want Richard Parker to die at all, because if he died I would be left alone with despair, a foe even more formidable than a tiger."
Aware of how unlikely his premise sounds, Martel delivers his story by way of Pi’s account to the insurance investigators, who question it at every turn and seem affronted that they are asked to believe it. Pi quietly challenges their assumptions. Despite all the trials of the journey, much of the tension in the book comes from Pi’s simple desire to convince these two dry men of Richard Parker’s luminous existence, and of how much he meant to Pi.
See the uncropped picture here: https://www.facebook.com/danamartist/posts/2817533001683145