The Retiring Room

Now here's a picture with a long history of very gradual development. It's a His Dark Materials illustration; Lyra Belacqua in the Retiring Room of Jordan college at the beginning of Northern Lights. She's just heard someone approaching and is about to leap behind the armchair to hide.

It's been about three? four? years since I started this. In fact! I've got a picture of it at an earlier stage here. And I wouldn't exactly say it's finished, because where's Pantalaimon? But the elements that are there, are... finished, I guess. The latest burst of activity is the third or fourth such since the thing was begun, each representing several weeks of attention to the thing.

Phew.

As for Pantalaimon I'm stumped on what form he should be in and where he should be placed. In the book he's a moth throughout this scene, but when I was in the earlier stages of painting this I imagined maybe I'd make him a bird of paradise for a couple of reasons: a bird starting into surprised flight would bring a lot of movement to the picture; the colours would pick up on their more sombre versions of the room; a bird of paradise would be quite incongruous with the staid, English surroundings, implying the uncanny, magical nature of daemons.

But I've become uncertain. I feel like he should maybe tie in with Lyra's grey-scale colour scheme rather than the room's colour scheme.

Um... Harry Potter fanart. Apparently.

My feelings about Harry Potter have traditionally ranged from the actively vitriolic to the mildly dismissive (although, to be fair, this is more inspired my the disproportional love the franchise receives rather than the books themselves which I have read and mostly enjoyed).

Actually, my attitude mellowed considerably recently since seeing the final film. It was pretty poor stuff, and it made me realised Rowling's not inconsiderable skills as a storyteller - that with the same materials she could produce something ten times as exciting, moving and satisfying as the filmmakers mustered. Although the 'nineteen-years-later' coda has a the quality of bad fanfiction no matter who is doing it.

Anyway.

As posted previously I started this picture with different characters in mind but couldn't get the idea of the Marauders (plus Lily) out of my head once I'd thought of it.

If not clear, it's Lily, Peter, Sirius, Remus and James l-r.

It's a Sherlock jamboree

More Sherlock Holmes pictures. Specifically BBC!Sherlock. Although the above picture seems to have turned out to resemble the movie version of the characters more. Partly because I put them in Victorian clothes, those being more fun to draw than modern day childrens' clothes.

A roughly 14-year-old Mycroft and roughly 7-year-old Sherlock. Yes, like many I'm a sucker for the idea of a fundamentally close realtionship between the brothers. In particular I was wondering why, for all the 'young Sherlock' franchises no one seems to have thought of partnering him with his big brother. Possibly because canonically there's meant to be much more of an age gap and you'd want them fairly well matched... but I do like the idea of a little sidekick Sherlock, hugely admiring of his brother but also desperately competitive. The more energetic but impulsive one to Mycroft's more reseved and careful intelligence...

Anyway, this has very little to do with this picture as I think even Sherlock Holmes would need to be a little more than 7 before he started crime fighting. And more importantly, this:

Possibly I've spent too long working with children's books, but when I thought about how popular pictures of young Mycroft and Sherlock were, and how their parents are always absent giving the impression that Mycroft is raising his brother singlehandedly, I thought of Lauren Child's Charlie And Lola books.

Then I thought of 'I have this little brother Sherlock...', giggled for half and hour, and doodled this. Then I went to have a quiet lie down and log hard think about my life. Didn't work. I still think it's funny.

Finally from my page of Sherlock obsession is one of Sherlock Holmes and Mrs. Hudson. For some reason. She was meant to be toasting the view with her mug of cha, but it looks more like she's offering it to whoever she and Sherlock are talking to (Lestrade?), which I rather like. To me it looks like a scene taking place after some dramatic denouement at 221b Baker Street: Mrs. Hudson's providing the police with tea and biscuits and Sherlock Holmes looks very pleased with himself. He also looks like Kevin Bacon and has a weird neck. Which is a shame. And controversially, his biscuit of choice is the pink wafer. Why did I draw this? I think it may be time for another quiet lie down.

What larks

Cos the Sherlock Holmes picture was so quick I thought I might be able to set myself the task of churning out a finished picture a day... I can't. But I done this to, well, this extent. I'm unsure of how to proceed: in paint? Collage? The usual mix?

It's characters of my own again. The other one I was doing which included these characters is still ongoing.

A Study In Mixed-Media

Lolz.

It's Holmes and Watson!

... Okay, not by any traditional standard, but I'm a big fan of the BBC version and also love the Downey Junior/Law portrayal (though I find the film otherwise patchy). And the way in which I appreciate things is by putting them through the prism of my own convoluted character design process.

The thing that particularly fascinates me about Holmes, apart from all the obvious things that ake his a popular character, is the little acknowledged fact that he's 27 years old in A Study In Scarlet. Not only has this been worked out according to other canonical facts - to me he really reads like a young man. The nervous arrogance, the ambition of a man at the beginning of his career, the lack of money, the need to share his flat. Indeed, when Watson first meets Holmes, he mistakes him for a student. Arthur Conan Doyle was 27 when he wrote the story. I'm 27 now. It's no wonder I find a 27-year-old Holmes interesting.

Watson, I think is a bit older - he's gone through medical traing AND seen active service in the army. Early 30s at least.

The thing that makes them one of the great partnerships in fiction is the same thing that ALL great double-acts boil down to - not that I can define exactly what that is (the right balance of mutual dependancy and antagonism?) but I mention it because I was thinking about Russell Brand while I sketched Holmes. His relationship with friend and radio show co-host Matt Morgan prompted me to relate him to Holmes: the sharp intelligence, the ego, the bohemianism, the outsider status (which I think all comedians have to some extent - interested in people but not of them), the dependance on a few strong human bonds, one in particular...

Anyhoo. A vague narrative evolved as I was working: a Hound-Of-The-Baskerville's-style situation; Holmes and Watson called urgently to the murder scene from their beds (I guess explains Holmes shirtlessness?); an outdoor murder scene drenched in mud and blood.

So this, therefore, is Holmes and Watson having a quiet smoke in a blood-trampled porch, recovering from the gore in the case of Watson, who is remarkably squeamish for a soldier and a doctor; and beginning to theorise in the case of Holmes.

It was really just a character design exercise but I'm tempted to contextualise the figues more - hint at the nighttime setting, the stone wall they're standing against etc...

Dido Twite and Simon Battersea

...And in the meantime:

Young Dido Twite, cockney street-sparrow-turned-repeated-saviour-of-the-English-monarchy and her friend Simon Battersea, one-time-long-lost-heir-to-the-Duchy-of-Battersea and briefly king of England.

As far as I'm concerned Joan Aiken's Wolves Of Willoughby Chase and its sequels are some of the great childrens' books. Despite the 'classic' status of the former, the books get no where near enough attention (not least on DA). Dido is the hero of the bulk of the series and Simon, star of Black Hearts in Battersea, recurrs as well. I love their friendship and loyalty to one another. There's a bare hint of romance towards the end of the series but mostly Aiken never seems to feel the need to examine their relationship. They meet in youth (Dido's nine, Simon's a teenager) and grow up an undisclosed amount in the book

I've drawn them both as young adults, so some time after the end of the series, and tried to depict an interaction that could be romantic or not. I based it on a photo by Venetia Dearden. Dido seems to have grown her hair but it doesn't look as if she ever brushes it, the perennial urchin. I had trouble with her wolfskin jacket: she looks like a biker. I'm more pleased with Simon's Regency coat... except in the Wolves alternate history, there is no Regency of course... buh.

I should also add that , for extra London authenticity, the brown paper it's painted/collaged onto is a paper bag from the last time I had fish and chips.

Inspired particularly by finding actual (and brilliant) Joan Aiken fanfic

Work progresses.

New paint/collage work

The thing what I'm working on at the moment, when I'm not working on what I'm meant to be working on... heh.

It's based on a drawing I've had lying around for a little while, of some characters of my own, but my reason for working on it now is essentially to try out some of the collage ideas I've been thinking about lately. As I mentioned in my last post, I like how a couple of things I've done recently have had a bit of a stripped-back look compared to my usual approach.

Therefore I'm working on this quite slowly, having a big ol' think before I apply any more paper to stop myself from overworking it.

Also, my desk looks like this:

More A Little Princess

An updated version of this. In fact, apart from Becky's hair (she's the girl higher on the page) I haven't done any more work to the original, but I've played around in Photoshop to test ideas.

I really like the physical copy of this, but I can't get it to look good on screen - and that's something I've been thinking about lately: producing work that can be more successfully reproduced digitally. My two favourite recent bits of work are the character design for the father from Beauty And The Beast and my other A Little Princess illustration.

So perhaps the way forward is a slightly less texture/more watercolour-y approach with the acrylics, and using paper as flat pattern more than textured collage.

Anyway, I again did a quick mock-up of how this might look as a book cover and I think the result is not bad:

Beauty

I don't know if it's because I'm using an aging Emac since my own laptop died, because my scanner is getting on, or because my work is difficult to photograph/scan (the latter is definitely a factor) but these images a re extremely not good. At least they give the general idea.

Anyway. As I already mentioned, striking the right balance in telling Beauty And The Beast to young children is a challenge. With Beauty, you want to make her look young so a young readership has sympathy with her, but at the same time you don't want to depict someone who looks like a pre-teen falling in love with a big, bestial male.

My thoughts, as usual, gravitated towards 20s/30s design - in this case the boyish, shapeless cuts of the dresses. Putting Beauty in a shapeless, dropped-waist shift means she still looks cute but her age is ambiguous. I also gave her beauty of the soft-20s-prettiness variety which again makes her look ambiguously youthful I hope. Her hair is in loose pigtails rather than being down or formally dressed.

I also think it makes sense to dress Beauty in practical, slightly boyish clothes (I imagine this is some sort of riding outfit) rather than the beautiful gowns she is normally shown in, and to put her hair in a careless, scruffy style, because it throws any prettiness I've managed to depict in her face into sharp relief.

The lines might be very 20s but I again tried to inject a certain amount of vagueness about time and geographical setting by the patterns I chose. I gave Beauty a white palette since she's the traditional fairy tale innocent. It also makes her black hair look more striking.

I'm well into using colour as a signifier... in this case I like how she and the Beast are at opposite ends of the greyscale so they're related in colour as well as contrasting. Her white is punctuated with earthy colours, green and brown (probably not clear in the scan), because she's your humble, friend-to-all-living-creatures type. Beast has bright red and blue in his clothes because he is removed from down-to-earth living as a prince and a Beast. The palace is dominated by my favourite colour, green, which can be used to create an unworldly, unnatural atmosphere as I've attempted in the dining-hall illustration. Alphonso Cuaron uses green an awful lot to create various atmospheres. Look at his 'A Little Princess' - it's the greenest film you'll ever see.

If I was working on the actual picture book, some sort of colour/lighting map is one of the first plans I'd make.