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.