Dick Whittington (and his cat, too)

I've Got No Strings (Petroushka)

First of all, many sincere apologies for not updating this blog. Things in general have been an absolute rollercoaster these past few months, but I've been particularly pre-occupied since the end of May/beginning of June (yet ultimately not for all that bad reasons). I've now found myself in a somewhat quieter period, though things will probably speed up once more come a few weeks time.

Anyhow, while I'm "stringless", so to speak, here's a picture of a living puppet other than Pinocchio. Igor Stravinsky's ballet Petroushka tells the story of a clown puppet at a winter carnival brought to life by his cruel master's magic flute. Though I've never seen the ballet (to be perfectly honest, it's not my cup of tea), the music and the story is beautiful. I believe that Walt Disney briefly considered animating it as a segment for his ambitious and sadly ill-fated Fantasia follow-up. If we ever do see another Fantasia film (highly unlikely as it is, unfortunately), I'm sure that this would be an excellent choice...

A Turnip from 2011

It's the Circle of Life?

Here's a little something from around February or March of last year: a few little studies in gouache and pencil on The Enormous Turnip. I actually meant to post it here quite some time ago, but it got lost amongst all sorts of new things that I kept churning out. I have included the entire page I was working on in addition to the main highlights as separate images.

I will naturally admit that I didn't get very far with the whole thing, but I did have a clear vision of the story in my head and where I would have gone with it. As with many other fairy tales and fables, The Enormous Turnip is so flexible that it can be easily adapted and changed without losing much of the plot and significance of the original, standardised version. The original story is Russian in origin, but most contemporary illustrated versions don't tend to envision it as such. I too decided against the Russian peasant setting, and instead envisioned the story as taking place in a Victorian walled garden somewhere in late-19th/early-20th century rural England. I think I even drew a fuller picture of the old man, in which he was definitely wearing clothes typical of the era.

Toad of Toad Hall

Not much more than a study, but here's a quick little sketch of the wayward protagonist from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. A story like The Wind in the Willows is easier to visualise than some comparable works, as it arguably doesn't have a set of definitive set of illustrations associated with it as the likes of Alice in Wonderland or Roald Dahl's books do (though I think it is worth saying that E.H. Shepard's illustrations are classic).

The Sadness of Birthday Bear

When Young Holly encountered Birthday Bear

The poor old teddy was in such despair.

"Come," said the girl,  handing him a sweet pea,

"Why all the tears? Why be melancholy?"

"Alas," said the bear, "'Tis a namesake curse!

"A grave malady that only gets worse!

"I long for my birthday most days of the year,

"But I weep and I wail when it gets here.

"You see, I'm reminded, like I'm Macbeth,

"That each day I'm ageing, closer to death."

The Afternoon of a Faun

Insomnia

Insomnia...something I only know too well.

Grim Lairy Tales

Cheshire Countryside

Where I am, it is chucking it down, and I believe it's the same for much of the UK. So for all in need of a jolly holiday, here we have a little something inspired by my home county...

Andersen's Duckling

The Blob Programme

Seven in One Blow!

Among many things, 2012 marks the bicentenary of the first publication of Kinder- und Hausmärchen, better known in English as Grimms' Fairy Tales. An initial reaction may be "are they that young?", as a good number of the tales have become so firmly rooted in collective Western culture that you'd think they'd have been published even earlier. In fact, if you were to ask anybody in Western society to list a couple of fairy tales, I'd be surprised if there weren't any recorded by Grimm in at least some variant.

One of two terrible giants awakens, unsure as to who has been throwing stones at him.

The subject of this post, The Brave Little Tailor, is one of Grimms' better known tales, despite having experienced decreasing popularity in the English-speaking world (as with many great fairy tales, alas!). It probably helped in some way that it inspired a 1938 Mickey Mouse cartoon of the same name, which easily ranks amongst the best of the Disney shorts. The tale concerns a young tailor who kills seven pesky flies and goes crying: "Seven in one blow!" Being mistaken for a great killer of giants, the tailor must use his wits to stop himself falling victim to a string of giants and other dangerous beings.

Glam Elephant

A little something (or rather big something), sort of inspired by the animal ballet ("Dance of the Hours") in Fantasia. Also - 50th post!

Old European Legends

These past two days, I rendered some drawings based on some old European legends. The pictures may perhaps be a bit bleak compared to some of my other works, but I think they characterise the dark nature of the stories that they are illustrating.

Reynard the Fox: A medieval cycle from a shared European heritage (though mainly French and Flemish) satirising the epic poetry and romances of the day. In practically all of the episodes, numerous animals fall victim to the eponymous anti-hero's tricks.

The Golem of Prague: From Jewish folklore comes a mythical clay being created by Rabbi Lowe to protect his people from the pogroms facing them in the sixteenth century Prague. References to the character feature prominently in the Czech capital.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin: The most well known of the stories portrayed, concerning a mysterious minstrel who uses his magic flute to abduct the children of Hamelin (Hameln in German) after his deed of similarly removing the town's rats is left unrewarded by the town's mayor.

Easter Rain

Here's another little Easter gift for you all. This picture is based on the French legend of the Easter bells. While the Easter Bunny has become the celebration's mascot all over the world, rabbits still do not bring Easter eggs in the French tradition. Instead, the eggs are brought by flying bells. According to legend, all the bells in France leave their towers on Maundy Thursday to go on a pilgrimage to Rome. The sound of bells therefore cannot be heard for three days. On Easter Morning, the bells return, and their music can once more be heard. As they fly over France, they drop goodies for all the children to find. Thus begins the search...

Happy Easter!

More Magic Flute

Bluebeard

A quick take on a Bluebeard, the old French tale of a young maiden who marries an ugly nobleman with an even uglier secret. Classified as a fairy tale but quite frankly a forerunner of the horror story (it makes even the darkest versions of Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White look about as scary as The Very Hungry Caterpillar), I hope to have captured the grim nature of the yarn.

Der Teufel

A little something I did in gouache. I always worry that my painting style seems like a knock-off of Mary Blair. Suffice to say, I doubt Mary Blair would create something like this demon...

Jack's Giant Adversary

Another stab at  Jack and the Beanstalk. This time it's the story's villain, a monster of a man with an appetite for young English males.

Bacchus, God of Wine

Aliens

I know, I know; I haven't posted in a week. Needless to say, I should be posting a good few more things here at quite a rapid rate, so you shouldn't be too disappointed.

Kleine Hütte im Wald

Ballet Casting Error

Jack Chopping Down the Beanstalk

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK
"Jack jumped down from the beanstalk and got hold of an axe, for he could see the giant climbing down."

The Moomins: Tribute to Tove

Represented are my renditions of two characters created by a new favourite illustrator of mine - Tove Jansson. Yes, I'll admit it, this is fan-art, something I tend to avoid, but leave me be.

©Puffin Books

Tove Jansson (1914-2001) was born into a well-to-do Swedish-speaking family in Helsinki, Finland (then part of the Russian Empire). An artist and writer, she is best remembered for a series of Moomin chapter books and comic strips. Set in a fictional forested area of Finland called Moomin Valley (what else?), the series follow the Moomin family - Moominmamma, Moominpappa and their son Moomintroll - in addition to a host of other characters such as the gentle Snork Maiden, the vagabond Snufkin and a range of obsessive-compulsive creatures called the Hemulens. It was on this series that she developed a truly distinctive, dreamlike pen-and-ink style.

Andersen's Emperor

The Emperor's New Clothes

Another Andersen-related piece today after the other day's mermaid. This time I've had a stab at drawing a picture of a scene from The Emperor's New Clothes, which first appeared in 1837 alongside The Little Mermaid in a small booklet. A delightfully satirical fable, its moral rings just as true in today's society and political landscape as it did nearly two-hundred years ago. The scene depicted is the moment where the emperor finally tries on clothes made of a material that "has a wonderful way of becoming invisible to anyone who is unfit for office or unusually stupid". Of course, the whole notion of magic material is a load of nonsense, merely the invention of two swindlers posing as reputable tailors. Daunted by the prospect of being declared incompetent, however, the emperor and his court imagine that the clothes do exist...

Not everybody's got a laughing place...

Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Athenian...

Around a week ago, I drew a picture of the Cyclops from Homer's Odyssey. I posted it on here, but chances are that I'm the only one who even saw it live. I really didn't like what I'd drawn, so I decided to scrap the post to avoid showing the world. Last night, I tackled the Cyclops again, this time having in mind the work of artists from the Golden Age of Hollywood Animation, in particular Ward Kimball, the Disney animator who drew some of the broader, looser characters in some of the classic Disney feature films, such as Jiminy Cricket, Bacchus in Fantasia's "Pastoral Symphony", the Mad Hatter and March Hare, the crows in Dumbo and Cinderella's mice friends.

Although I think that my cyclops is a bit too broad fit perfectly into an apt illustration of Homer's epic, I have to say that I prefer this attempt compared to the first attempt last week.

Andersen's Mermaid

The Little Mermaid

Of all the fairy tales, I would say that my favourites tend to be those of Hans Christian Andersen. Forget the usual Ladybird retellings or antiquated public-domain translations found online; I would urge anybody to get a fresh, modern translation of the original stories, my favourite being the Penguin Classics edition (translated by Tiina Nunnally), followed closely by Naomi Lewis' translation (mainly as her translations have been the basis for a number of picture books and illustrated editions, my favourite being the one illustrated by Joel Stewart). A good English rendering of Andersen's stories lets Andersen's unique, arguably revolutionary, way with words shine through, and will appeal to both children and adults.

Mosko-Cat

Icarus the Dog

Prince Ivan and the Firebird

Another one from last year. I did truly mean to post this back a while ago, but I didn't get round to even scanning it in. This picture illustrates a scene from the most famous of the Russian Firebird stories (the full title of the tale in question is Prince Ivan, the Firebird and the Grey Wolf, though many English-language editions are just called The Firebird). In the scene, Prince Ivan, youngest son of a great tsar, catches one of the Firebird's tail feathers, famed for shining brightly like golden stars.

Some of the feather's outline (created using brown drawing ink and a dip pen) wasn't quite picked up during the scanning, but I have to say that it does perhaps give the feather more of a radiant, mystical feel to it.

Arabian Nights Potpourri

Here are two images inspired by tales from the Arabian Nights. The first (see above) is a drawing of the Arabian Nights story Ali-Baba and the Forty Thieves I created last summer (the end of July, I think). The moment depicted in the pen-and-ink/ink wash picture is when Ali-Baba first enters the Cave of the Forty Thieves. The second (see below) is a pen-and-ink/watercolour picture of Aladdin and the Genie of the Lamp, which I created last month.

Ballet

The Clever Prince

This is a drawing for a short story idea I came up with about a melancholy yet studious prince. I have yet to fully write the story down, and I doubt that it would ever get published unless I were suddenly to become a highly successful children's author with a stellar list of titles, so this shall be its outlet for the time being.

Pinocchio/Peter Pan

I'm going to treat you to some studies I made at the end of January on two relatively similar stories - J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan and Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio. I say that they're similar because they are original fantasy stories heavily influenced by the genre of fairy tale; they deal with themes of childhood, growing up and responsibility; also, just as importantly, they were immortalised and popularised in Disney animation. I grew up with the Disney versions (Pinocchio is probably my favourite Disney film), yet I only read the original texts as an adult.

Tinkerbell is dying - Peter asks what can save her.

Peter Pan in flight

The drawings I've made here are illustrations of the original stories, rooted in Europe rather than American pop-culture. I've tried to detach myself from Disney's imagination-grabbing imagery, though I think I failed when it came to Pinocchio's hat and hair. They were really made as forms of experimentation using . My take on the Blue Fairy was to practice making line-drawings in coloured ink turned out (as opposed to the standard, permanent black Indian ink), while with the drawings of Peter Pan, I was practising my hand at drawing action shots of human figures.

Pinocchio and the Blue Fairy

Corporate Wolves

"Capitalism has an intense, rich flavour."

  -Wolfgang P. Loupine, 2012                  

Papageno and Papagena

A few days ago, I created some designs for characters from Mozart's immortal 1791 opera The Magic Flute. In addition to being rooted in philosophical ideals of the Enlightenment and freemasonry, the opera's plot is largely inspired by popular exotic tales of the fantastic. There are thus plenty of enchanting settings, characters and scenarios for an artist to tackle. Here are my renditions of two of the more comic characters in the opera: Papageno, the dreamy bird catcher, and his bride Papagena. Both clad in wild plumage, the two characters are probably my favourite in the opera.

Lovers