Day 16 - Day 20: Folklore
Storytime! This is the prompt that I was most excited for but sadly it fell onto the week that I’m super busy ;_; Growing up, my parents got me many storybooks, and almost every single one included the tale of Tấm and Cám. So this is my illustration of Tấm.
Tấm and Cám were stepsisters. Cám and her mother always used Tấm because Tấm was so nice and never tried to fight back. When Tấm married the prince, Cám and her mother killed Tấm out of hatred and then Cám took Tấm’s position as the prince’s wife. But because Tấm was a good person, there was always a Buddha giving her heaven’s blessings and reincarnated her every time Cám and the stepmother killed Tấm. In the end, Tấm got reincarnated back as herself and she got back with the prince. Some books say Cám and her mother later died tragically but didn’t mention how. There was one book I had in particular that talks about how in the end, Tấm tricked and boiled Cám alive then send her meat for the stepmother to eat. The stepmother killed herself after knowing that she ate her daughter’s meat.
I tried to include colors with this piece but it just seems out of place so I ended up just putting it in grayscale. Hopefully, that still translate over well :> The poem I used is Nghĩ Về Tấm Cám by Nguyễn Ngọc Hưng