The Ribbon

Drew an entry for the collective “Ghostbook” comic/artbook kickstarter. I wasn’t picked to be in the book, unfortunately, but I still get to back and behold an amazing project, so that’s all pretty awesome, generally! Haha!

The story behind this piece is inspired by the old urban tale of the ribbon. That tale goes a bit like this :

There was once a pretty lady who always wore a ribbon around her neck. She wore the ribbon when she slept, when she went to church and every single time she went out. No one ever saw her without her ribbon. One day she met a young man and they fell deeply in love. When he noticed the ribbon was always there, he asked “Why do you wear that ribbon?” She just smiled and said, “I’ll tell you when we get married one day.”

Four months later they were married and living happily together. Whenever he asked her why she wore the ribbon, she would say, “I’ll tell you someday, just don’t take it off.” One night he couldn’t take it anymore and had to know why she wore the ribbon. He snuck up on her when she was sleeping and slowly loosened the ribbon.

As soon as he untied it, her head fell off and rolled to her husband’s feet. The eyes opened and the head yelled, “I TOLD YOU NOT TO REMOVE MY RIBBON!!!” The poor man went mad and was never seen again.

One of the camp councelors when I was a kid liked to tell a less scary version, and a more tragic version, where the ghost was doing all of this to be with the man she loved before her death and he basically removes the ribbon when little details hint at the fact that she is dead, to free her. In their last moments, she’s turning intangible, so he can’t even hold her until she fades away.

I do belive that camp councelor was a romantic.

Check out the kickstarter right here. You know you want to : [link]