The catbird seat

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My brother is a man of many passions. One of his current obsessions is The New Yorker magazine—its articles and history. While Phil visited us for the Christmas/New Year’s holiday, he read aloud to me a good bit of the book pictured here by James Thurber. Thurber was a cartoonist, author, journalist and playwright, best known for his cartoons and short stories that were published in The New Yorker magazine.

Because Phil was so “into” this topic while he was visiting, I asked him to let me take a photo of him reading the book. As soon as he sat down, as if on cue, Flash jumped up to read along with him! When I asked Phil what he thought I ought to title this page, he replied, “How about ‘The catbird seat,’ one of Thurber’s short stories.” Just purrfect!

Product/technique notes

Notice that I overlaid the title stickers in the “empty” space at the bottom of the photo. In this case, it worked quite well because the slope of my brother’s left leg and foot direct the viewer’s eye right to the title. So, the eye rests first on his face and the cat, then slides down the leg to the title and finally roams around the details of the circle grid to figure out how the patterned papers support my story. It helps connect everything.

I used patterned papers from BasicGrey’s “Oxford” and “Out of Print” collections and followed Let’s Capture Our Memories sketch #107.