How can an aunt be a sister and a mother?
Die, and be a muse to your niece. And have that niece attempt suicide.
A member of the Universal Order of Sisterhood, Sister Adèle is Rafi's angelic creative muse, in which she is called upon whenever Rafi is in need for a creative idea. Some of Adèle's ideas ended up being big successes, while others turn out to be big clunkers, proving that beings from a higher authority, like humans, aren't perfect. Also at times, Adèle would get too romantically excited when she sees Rafi successfully take her advice.
In addition to being Rafi's aunt, Adèle is also Rafi's mother -- in a way; after Rafi's suicide attempt when she was twelve, Sister Adèle informed Rafi that part of her soul has gone to heaven, and, as "punishment" for doing such a vile deed, the wayward part of Rafi's soul would be used to create a new embodiment of the "lost" part of Rafi's soul, named "Mini-Rafi". But there's something with Mini-Rafi that's not quite right...
Originally, Sister Adèle was Nathalie's older sister, Adèle Fusey, who was originally a young artist in Quebec City who died of breast cancer at 23 in 1970.
As an angel, she joined the Universal Order of Sisterhood, a group of female angels who are permanently assigned to a living woman; their mission is to help living women do good and leave a decent mark on society -- Sister Adèle's specialty is creativity, the kind of thing that Rafi's mother always stresses.
This was my first drawing of Adèle, as an angel. Here's she really looks like a stereotypic angel.
This was my first picture of Sister Adèle, in street clothes.
This was Adèle in 1968, two years before her tragic death.
No, she was not a "Sister" yet; she wore her necklace as a fashion
and political statement. However, since then, I've decided to have the pre-death
Adèle look more like her angel personna, minus the wings, halo and
necklace.
Another picture of Sister Adèle that I've drawn, for the Art School section. I've changed her shirt to a tie-dye, as it more represents how her niece, Rafi, would dress shen she's her age. The clothes Sister Adèle wears also represents the last street clothes that she worn before her death in 1970, which is what she'll wear once she meets up with Rafi.
This is a close-up of Sister Adèle's signature picture in her introductory letter from Lesson 1 of her Art School, that she drew, displaying her happy 1960s attitude that she retained (without the hippy talk; I prefer that she speaks French and regular English).
Don't you wish all angels look like her?
In actuality, I drew this using a drawing marker only; no pencils.
This is the exact same picture as above, but rendered with brush markers. I copied the first picture on my printer and traced it with brush markers.
This picture of Sister Adèle was done using brush pens (except for the regular yellow marker).
Like most other characters, she's another one who was inspired by something else. In this case, it was a T-shirt that I picked up at a thrift shop in Quebec City, when I was on vacation in February 2005.
The shirt in question, pictured above, was a horoscopic picture of "Vierge", French for "Virgo".
(Actually, I haven't known about that until I first wrote this (on 4/4/2005).)
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