"I hope so," replied the child. "After I am dead, but not before. I know the doctor must be right, Oliver, because I dream so much of Heaven, and Angels, and kind faces that I never see when I am awake. Kiss me," said the child, climbing up the low gate, and flinging his little arms round Oliver's neck. "Good-bye, dear! God bless you!"
-----------------------------------------------Oliver Twist

I always wanted to read the novel after I watched the movie. And one day I found one on sale, so I went "yay!" and bought it without a second thought. It was a pretty good deal because the book cover was beautiful and there are also ink illustrations included in the book.

I read the book, and it surprised me greatly, since there's so many characters in there whom I never even heard of. But I can understand because the book is much too long to be made into a movie and include every little detail. I think the series version might include more narrations, but I have not yet a chance to watch it.

I read it almost two years ago, and this imagery has been in my head since then. But I haven't decided to actually draw it until recently. The characters here are Oliver and Dick. I don't think Dick's character appeared in either one of the movies, but he sure is a memorable character for me.

In case you haven't read the book, this is the part when Oliver decides to run away from the orphanage, and meets a child before he go. The child turns out to be Dick, Oliver's only friend in the orphanage who is a bit younger than him but suffered none less. He bid him farewell while Dick told him that he is very ill.

Unfortunately...that was Oliver's last words with Dick. When Oliver was back times later Dick has already died. It was a tragedy.

This picture frustrates the HELL out of me...well at first I was unsure how Dick puts his arms around Oliver because first the book says Dick puts his arms through the rails to greet Oliver then it described the rails as 'low' and Dick climbs on top of it. Maybe I'm just getting it wrong but how can the rails be tall enough to put his arms through yet low enough to be climbed upon and still managed to hug Oliver's neck? :/ And then I decided not to care and go with the first image that came to my head

I wanted to try using SAI for painting...it was my first time using SAI, and I was rather hopelessly confusing and hard to control...I admit the tools result in some pretty nice effects, but DAMN was it hard to control! Arrgh, SAI is just too frustrating! I still prefer photoshop.

PS: do you think I need a background? I was experimenting with different types of background, and none of them seem to look better than the one without any background. The empty background still frustrates me though. Now I am just really confused.

Oliver Twist © Charles Dickens