Direct watercolour day 25 - painting 27

So I spent about two hours on painting 27 on Tuesday and finished it by mid-morning on Wednesday. The First World War and in particular the great tragedy of it has fascinated me for a long time. The tank was originally suggested by Winston Churchill and was first used in the Battle of the Somme. Being a member of a tank crew was one of the most hazardous things one could be at that time. There’s no official figures, but it’s reckoned that the average life expectancy of a member of a tank crew was probably less than 6 weeks.

Direct watercolour challenge day 24

 Okay, so I finished yesterday, June 23rd, having made 26 watercolours to be 3 days/ paintings ahead, It's just as well because circumstances at home meant that I wasn't able to start painting today until this evening. Besides, I got up pretty tired this morning and the reverse side of making two pictures I was very pleased with yesterday was that I thought that there's no way I can top that, so what would be the point?

Well, it's not the first time I've felt like this during the challenge. So I did what I did then. I used a bit of psychology on myself, reminding myself that it was really stupid to come this far and give up - and if I left off painting today I would find it harder to do it tomorrow, whereas if I at least made a start I would be much more likely to come back and finish it tomorrow. This will only leave 3 more paintings to complete the set. Also, what I have done this year is, in my opinion, a better set than 2023's. So logically, all these last four paintings need to be is better than the worst four paintings from 2023. That's a far less daunting prospect. 

So I spent about two hours on painting 27 tonight. It's not finished but it has momentum now, and I think it's going to be fine. 

Direct Watercolour Challenge 2025 - paintings 25 and 26

25  Up until Sunday 22^nd June I had painted every day during the challenge, although this does not mean that I completed a painting every day. However on the Sunday I wasn’t at all well with a bad stomach. Well Ifelt on the mend on the 23^rd. Having lost the day on the Sunday I was still two pictures ahead of schedule. In 2023 I made a couple of pictures based on films. Now, we all have films we love which aren’t necessarily great films and one of mine is Cliffhanger. I think it’s a great, although at times rather silly, action movie, and if it’s on the telly then that’s it, I’m settling down to watch it. I did mention previously about how I’m afraid one of these last few pictures will be rubbish and spoil the set. Well this one is fine, thankfully.

26  I  did actually begin this one before the Cliffhanger picture. It’s my (very inferior) copy of a painting by my favourite watercolour artist, Thomas Schaller. I waned to apply colours across the paper which I would then leave to dry so I could paint on it. I started Cliffhanger while waiting for the paper to dry and enjoyed it so much that I didn't come back to this until I had actually finished the Cliffhanger painting. This shows the aerial tramway from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island in New York City. I rode on this in 2024, and the view on the ride back to Manhattan is out of this world. I think that if you pressed me for a definitive answer to the question – apart from London – which is the favourite city you have ever visited – I would say New York. As I said with number 24, I do think I learned quite a bit from trying this. If it encourages anyone to go and have a look at the original, the that’s a real bonus.

Direct Watercolour challenge 2025 - 23 and 24

23 Now, what with me being off work with a broken shoulder, it being the weekend shouldn’t make any great difference. However I always feel that I should be more productive during the challenge at the weekends, so on Saturday 21^st I set out to make another 2 pictures. Since I was already 2 ahead of schedule then this would put me 3 ahead. The first one shows London’s Crystal Palace just after the disastrous fire in 1936. The Crystal Palace was originally built in Hyde Park in London to house the 1851 Great Exhibition. After the exhibition the building was bought by a group of businessmen and transported to Sydenham in South London where it was rebuilt as part of a large scale Victorian tourist attraction. In 1936 a devastating fire consumed the building. What was left after the fire was irreparable and demolition followed, When I invent my time machine the first visit will be to the medieval London Bridge and the second will be to the Crystal Palace.

24  Cards on the table, this is not an original work. It’s a copy of a painting of Budapest I found on the internet. I found it on Reddit, but all I could find out about the artist was the artist’s username, Matway. Sometimes you can learn a lot from trying to reproduce another artist’s work and I think that this was one of those times. Now, when I can produce something like this without having to copy anyone else’s, then I’ll know I’m getting somewhere.

Direct Watercolour Challenge 2025 22 Port Talbot Dock Hotel

 

 was so happy with my bison painting that I decided to start another painting on the evening of the same day – Thursday 19^th June. I didn’t start until much later than I normally would because it wasn’t until later in the day that my new pad of watercolour paper was delivered. So, this building is the Dock Hotel in Port Talbot. After marrying a local girl I moved to Port Talbot from London in 1986. Port Talbot, an important industrial town, did have many fine Victorian and Edwardian buildings but a lot of them were swept away I a large scale redevelopment of the centre of tow in the early 1970s. I did see this building before it was demolished in 1989 – a crying shame in my opinion. 

Direct Watercolour challenge 2025 - painting 21

 

On the previous painting – the Betjeman statue – I used my last piece of proper watercolour paper. I ordered a new pad from Amazon, but it had not arrived by the time I wanted to start, so I took a gamble. I used a piece of ordinary 150 gsm sketching paper. It worked out better than I  hoped, for I know that the colours do look a bit muted on this sort of paper. The North American bison is a really interesting animal. Extensive hunting and slaughter of the bison population of the USA meant that a population numbering tens of millions in 1800 had dwindled to under 1100 by 1890. Since then efforts of conservationists have been outstandingly successful. There are estimated 150,000 bison today and they are no longer on the endangered list.

30x30 Direct Watercolour Challenge - 17 - 20

The last time I posted I was 2 paintings ahead of schedule. I  have painted every day since, but the 17^th painting took so long that I lost a day. Which I made back up by doing two the next day. Here they are

17  The Caffe Tramvaj in Wenceslas Square in Prague. I visited Prague in 2017 and this café is where I enjoyed a cappuccino. It’s one of my favourite cafes anywhere. Is it because the coffee is incredibly good, or very cheap, or because it has the most wonderful staff ? That would be no, no and no. But it’s an old tram! I read in the Autumn of 2024 that it had been shut down for not having a permit. It’s a shame. I am proud of this one – it took absolutely hours to complete.

18 British Grand Prix. Back in 2022 during the challenge month I managed to make a couple of pictures which were actually relatively close to what I saw in my head while I was making them, and one was of a 1950s formula 1 grand prix car . I was proud of it and did sell it. So come 2023 I  did another Grand Prix picture but this one was rubbish. Well, things have been going so well with my 2025 pictures that I decided to bite the bullet and have another go.

19  Okay, so, by the end of Saturday 14^th I had made 16 pictures in total, which put me two pictures,  two days ahead of schedule. Sunday 15th was my birthday and Father’s Day so I didn’t get started until the evening. As a result I only finished it on the Monday. Making picture 18 on Tuesday morning kept me a day ahead. However I still had enough oomph and had a plan for a ‘quick’ picture. I’m not sure which seaside pier this is, but I’ve always really liked piers. 10 minutes to do the sea wet on wet, then leave to dry. 10 minutes to do the sky then leave to dry. 10 minutes to do the light mountains and the dark mountains in the background. 15 minutes to paint the pier. Bish bosh, job’s a good’un.

20 I found it difficult to find the oomph to paint today.- Wednesday 18th. With my broken left shoulder I  have to sleep in an upright position and for the last three nights I have slept very poorly. I  pushed myself, remembering that this makes the two thirds complete mark. It’s a stupid thing but I’m feeling pressure now every time I  make another painting because it’s been going so well and I don’t want to spoil it with rubbish. So this is a statue of former poet laureate, lover of Victorian architecture, and architectural conservationist. It’s situated in St. Pancras Station in London.

So there we are. 20 completed, with 12 days of the month left.

30x30 Direct Watercolour challenge 14 - 16

Yes, folks, it's the 15th of June. as it happens it's my birthday, but it's also the end of the first half of the month of the 30x30 direct watercolour challenge.

In my last post I explained that I've managed to put myself a painting ahead of schedule. With three paintings made across Friday and Saturday, by yesterday evening I was 2 paintings ahead. I would like to make another today to stay that way but time will tell if that's going to happen.  So without further ado -

14 What can I say ? I  love huge fossils of extinct animals and the museums where they can be found. This in an exhibit in the La Brea Tar Pits, a bucket list destination. I tried hard with this one but it's not there, I'm afraid.

15 Thames Barge. I don't often copy other people's work, not least because my copies so often suck compared to the originals. but I made an exception for this,

16  I do love a choo choo. This is an interesting one because although it looks about 90 years old it was actually built in the 21st century, reusing a lot of parts from older,  scrapped engines.

2025 30x30 Direct Watercolour Challenge 9 - 13

 In my last post I showed my first 8 direct watercolours of this year's challenge. I have tried to produce full pictures, with backgrounds. My broken left shoulder means I can spend time on each picture and this may be why, in my opinion, these are the most consistent set I have produced in any year. Here are the next five. See whether you agree.

9 I find Americana a very fruitful source of inspiration, and likewise, I do enjoy portraying vehicles.

10- this is the beautiful city of Chester. At the moment this is about as good as I can do. Really pleased with this.

11 Way out of my comfort zone here, This was made on the 10th, the second picture of the day, to put me one day ahead.

12 I made this in my Canson mixed media journal. This is maybe why it is a little sketchy. I like the way that the bus wheel came out.

13 My reference photo has the car blue, but I love to see a red Morgan 3 wheeler so that's what I've painted. 

So that's where we ae - still 1 day ahead of schedule. More than a third done and closing in on the halfway mark

2025 30 x 30 Direct Watercolour Challenge

I don’t think I’ve posted since before last Friday, That was the day that I broke my left shoulder. Which is one good reason why I haven’t posted. One handed typing is a pain. One other reason why I haven’t posted since is that it’s now June, and June is the time of the 30x30 direct watercolour challenge. Direct watercolour means that you don’t sketch the design first – you have to go straight in with watercolour.

I first undertook the challenge in 2018 and I did complete it. I repeated in 2019, did not attempt it in 2020 and then made my third completion in 2021. Especially in these earlier years I quite often made quite sketchy paintings that were pretty quick and easy to do. I look at the stuff I did in those years and it’s not brilliant at all. Well, we all have to start somewhere. Then in 2022 I managed to make some pictures that I was quite proud of during the challenge. Not all of them by any means, but certainly some of them. In 2023 this continued, and although some of the first ten were a wee bit ropey, as a set they were clearly the best I’ve done. I loved the whole experience.

2024 it was a different story. Whereas my first ten were inconsistent the year before, now they were very consistent. Consistently bad. I didn’t think that any of them were any good. If I had managed one decent picture then maybe I might have continued. However they were all rubbish and I gave up after 10. I wasn’t annoyed with the fact that I wasn’t doing better than 23. I was angry with myself that I’d gone so far backwards.

So to 2025. I promised myself this –

I would give myself however long was necessary to make each painting and not go chasing the schedule of at least 1 per day.

I would on the same hand be prepared to stop working on each painting when I had done what I could and not overwork it.

I would be more experimental with colours

I would be doing it for fun

So 9 days in how is it going. Well, judge for yourself – here’s the first 8 –

1 – Old Royal Mail Van. One of my 2023 favourites also had an old postman’s van, although the one in this is older. Really pleased – a lot of quite difficult elements in this.

2 – Multicoloured warthog. I set out to be experimental here and I do rather like the results. One friend has already asked for a print.

3 – Donkey. Probably the weakest of the 8 so far. The actual modelling of the animal itself isn’t bad. I like the ghostly trees in the background. But I think I needed to be bolder with the colours. The overall effect is a little insipid.

4 – bull – Nothing insipid about the colours with this one. It was a bit of a reaction to what happened with the donkey and although it’s maybe a little more crude, I think it’s far more successful.

5 – 1940’s London. My plan with this was to use some bigger blocks of colour than I normally do and less detail and more suggestion. I am bowled over by the result. Yeah, it’s not a masterpiece, but it’s a painting that turned out very close to the picture that was in my head when I started. If I could have made something like this last year then I might well have completed the challenge.

6 – Oslo tiger statue – a very different painting, much bolder. I think the modelling of the statue itself is really good. Although when I was in Oslo in January it was so dull and gloomy it was hard to believe that the place ever looked like this.

7 – mid century grocer. It was time I made at least 1 picture where the focus is on a human figure. I have overworked the face, sadly. At least it’s not a complete wash out – I like the work on the shirt, for example.

8 – 30s/40’s Americana. While I was looking for reference photos for my grocer I came upon a photo showing this. I knew it would work as a subject if I could do my best to do it justice. Overall it took hours butt I’m stupidly pleased with the result

Well, look, I have to say that I think it’s the best start I’ve ever made to a 30x30 challenge. I think I’ve certainly spent more time on it than I’ve ever done before. Will the quality continue. Watch this space.

Weekend Sketches

Yesterday I just never found the time for another watercolour Treasure Island copy. In the last two or three months I’ve just been working in my Canson A5 mixed media sketching journal. However on Friday I wanted to make a copy of one of William Heath Robinson’s illustrations for the poems of Edgar Allan Poe. The original is such a complex illustration that I decided to use one of the empty pages in my Daler Rowney A4 sketchbook. Here’s my copy.

You know, I enjoyed it so much that I used the book for all of my sketches this weekend. Amongst others was this copy of a Treasure Island illustration by Walter Paget. Paget was a respected and very successful English illustrator in the last years of the 19^th century ad the first couple of decades of the 20^th. His illustrations to “Treasure Island” provide many striking images of the story and are amongst the most popular.

Finally, then, old Victoria London, a favourite subject of mine to sketch. This one took hours.

This week's pirate

Sorry – I’m a little bit late posting this one. This is my copy of Robert Ingpen’s Long John Silver. Robert Ingpen is an Australian artist and his illustrations of “Treasure Island” are among my favourites.

Seven Ages of Public Transport on London's Roads

 Last week I posted recent sketches of various forms of public transport on London's roads through the ages. I realised hat I hadn't made a new sketch of a trolleybus. So, here we go, in chronological order of their use rather than when I made them

1) Horse drawn bus

2) Horse drawn tram

Electric Tram

Motor Bus

Trolley Bus

Double Decker 

Now, yes, I know that's only six. Because I haven't yet done what should be the last of he series, a modern London Double Decker. Watch this space.

This week's Pirate

 Sorry, busy and no real time for chat this morning. Yesterday though was the third consecutive Saturday when I made a watercolour copy of an original Treasure Island illustration. The original of this was by Louis Rhaed and made at the end of the 19th or start of the 20th century. 

Me and London Buses (and Trams

^{You know, if I’ve got an old, or very old black and white photograph of London to use as reference for a sketch, then I’m happy. If it has a method of public transport in it, then doubly so. What can I say? I’m a simple soul. So while I’ve been chancing my arm at copying some Treasure Island illustrations recently, during the last week or two I’ve also been making some sketches of London transport. Here they are:-}

London’s first ever scheduled horse drawn buses were operated by Mr. George Shillibeer in 1829. Shillibeer – shilli name. Regulations over the next 30 years saw more efficient, lighter buses which could carry more passengers. Horse drawn services came under competition from motor buses and electric trams from the end of the Victorian era, and the last horse drawn service was withdrawn in 1911. The bus in the picture was operated by the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC). The company was formed in the eighteen fifties, and was one of the main companies to be amalgamated to form London Transport in the 1930s.

London’s first red motorbuses were operated by the LGOC – General for short. In fact London Transport would use the same colour scheme when they took over. London’s first really successful motor bus was the type B that entered service in 1911. During World War I 900 of these buses were sent out to the Western Front where they were nicknamed ‘Ole Bill’ after a popular newspaper cartoon figure of the time. The last Type B was withdrawn in 1926.

^{A couple of horse drawn tram lines began running in London in the 1860s, but they didn’t really get going until the 1870s.Electric powered trams weren’t used until the first years of the 20th century. By the outbreak of the First World War London had the largest tram network in Europe. However it was hard for tram companies to find investment for further expansion in the 1920s. Trams were expensive to maintain and competition from larger and more reliable motorised buses saw some companies increasingly switching. By the mid 30s it had been decided to replace London’s remaining tramways with motor buses and with trolleybuses powered by overhead wires. The outbreak of World War 2 meant that the last tram services remained until 1951.}

It's probably fair to say that no form of public transport ever contributed so much to London as the Routemaster double decker bus. Its contribution to London’s visual identity alone is immense. The iconic Routemaster first ran in 1954, and even though production ended in 1968 Routemaster services were still running into the new millennium, finally ending in 2005. I haven’t lived in London for 39 years, but I was born there, I grew up there, I went to London University. It will always be my home town. And there are some things which always feel like home to me, and a Routemaster bus is one of them. Thankfully, of the almost 3000 built, over a third of them still exist.

NC Wyeth

I’m sorry to admit that I was not very familiar with the work of American artist and illustrator NC Wyeth before I turned my attention to Treasure Island. This is a shame, because he was a wonderful artist and illustrator who produced what is arguably the most famous and celebrated set of illustrations for the novel.

Wyeth’s career lasted more than forty years, from the earliest years of the 20^th century until his death in the mid-forties. His first commission as an illustrator was for no less a publication than the Saturday Evening Post. He made his illustrations for Treasure Island in 1911 before he was 30. His illustrations are a million miles away from the kind of work being done by Arthur Rackham and his contemporaries in the UK. His use of colour is most appealing. However, this is what means I have ot tried to copy his work before today.

Believe me, I’m fully aware of my shortcomings when I have a paintbrush in my hand, But last week I plucked up the courage to have a go at Ralph Steadman’s Long John Silver and blow me, the results were much better than expected. Not brilliant, not, but not so bad as to make me want to rip the paper to shreds and set fire to the pieces after jumping up and down on them singing the Hallelujah Chorus. Trust me, that's an improvement on some of the rubbish I’ve perpetrated in the past.

So here it is. 

At the moment I’d say that I still prefer Mervyn Peake’s grim monochrome Treasure Island, but Wyeth’s are wonderful too.

Two more Treasure Island Illustrations, me hearties.

Yesterday I moved away from my illustration copies just for a change and produced a couple of responses to daily drawing challenges on Facebook. Before that I’d made another copy of a Peake Treasure Island illustration, which you can see here. 

So this morning I made up my mind to take the plunge and make an ink AND  watercolour copy of Ralph Steadman’s fantastic illustration of Long John Silver. I had to spend a while working out a methodology for doing it. My initial thought was to maybe put some background colour down first. The thing is, though, it can play havoc with an ink pen when you try to use it on top of dried watercolour. So it had to be ink lines first, hen apply the colour. I bought new uniball 0.05mm and 0.1mm pens since the ones I had are pretty much used up. Using the 0.05mm pen, a 0.3mm and a 0.8mm this is what I came up with.

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Incidentally I used Uniball pens because they are reliably waterproof and will take a watercolour on top with no running. No, they haven’t paid me for a testimonial, more’s the pity. Now, at one point I did cosier just laying down some watercolour to begin and finishing with watercolour pencils. But, you know, while I’m pretty confident of achieving what I wan with black ink fineliners, I’m always fearful of overworking with colours, and once I got to a certain point with the paint I felt that I was in danger of overworking it if I added more, and so I stopped. So this is the finished copy. 

As a copy, I’m pretty pleased. As a colour copy I’m absolutely delighted.

The Illustration Family Robinson

Stick with me for a moment. This will all eventually become relevant. I remember when I began studying for my A Levels there was a guy in my class who was actually a year older than the rest of us.  I think that he’d done O Level resits the previous year. I hope that I’m not being unfair when I say that I don’t think that he found A Level English the easiest of subjects. When it come to Art though, the guy was brilliant. To look at his own original work was to die a little inside, with the realisation that you would never be capable of producing original work like that yourself. He was so modest about it as well. I remember him telling me that he was doing a project on artist and illustrator Aubrey Beardlsey. This was my first encounter with the work of the man who would become one of my absolute favourite artist/illustrators. If I could wave my magic wand and have any artist or illustrator from the past produce a set of Alice illustrations it would be Aubrey Beardsley. I think he would have produced something outstanding. Sadly, he died just a few years before the copyright of Wonderland passed into the public domain.

So to the Robinson brothers, then. Once upon a time there were three brothers born in London, Thomas, Charles and William. Only 3 years spanned heir births. I can relate to this myself, since my older brother was born in 1963, I was born in 1964, and our younger brother was born in 1965. Their father and grandfather had both been illustrators and all three brothers had successful careers in illustration, especially during the Golden Age of British illustration. The youngest, William Heath Robinson, is the best remembered today, for his depiction of strange, convoluted and often pointless machines. To this day his name is used as an adjective for this kind of machine, the sort that looks like a mad inventor has knocked it up in their bedroom. William was the only one of the three who did not produce a set of illustrations to the Alice books. Both of the older brothers, Thomas and Charles, did.

The three brothers were active professionally from the 1890s onwards. Beardsley himself passed away in 1898. Did they know each other? Bearing in mind the similarity in their ages – Beardsley was actually slightly younger, and with the similar circles they moved in it seems very likely. Whatever the case the Robinsons’ work seems definitely to have been influenced by Beardsley. A few years ago when the Beardsley Gallery mounted an exhibition ‘The Beardsley Generation’ about Beardsley and his contemporaries who were influenced by him, the Robinsons were represented. Both Thomas Heath (TH) and Charles produced illustrations for Wonderland when the copyright on the book lapsed in 1907. I appreciate both but have a preference for Charles’ work, and I will start with these.

I find Charles Robinson's Alice illustrations a consistently interesting set. Like Mervyn Peake’s they range from the very complex and detailed - the Pool of Tears - to the much simpler - the Mock Turtle. Yet all of Peake's illustrations look like they were made by the same artist. Tenniel’s illustration all look like Tenniel’s work and Ralph Steadman’s illustrations all look like Ralph Steadman’s work. But with Charles Robinson’s, that’s not the case. If you didn't know, I don’t think you would pick out the pool of tears and mock turtle illustrations as having been created by the same hand. 

His illustration of the pool of tears goes beyond the text. His Alice looks almost demonic. The shading is really heavy, and the use of swirls and reflections in the pool make it a real tour de force, and hint at what Beardsley might have done. It’s by far my favourite illustration of Alice in the pool of tears. It’s framed by a relatively ornate Edwardian border. Yet many of his illustrations use very little shading at all. The Mock Turtle illustration for example could easily have been made 60 years later. With the stylisation of the image, the contrast between large areas of negative space and patches of pure black shading and the use of simple geometric shapes, this is another reflection of a different aspect of Beardsley’s work. Speaking of the Mock Turtle I can respect Robinson’s choice to go with something far more closely resembling a real turtle rather than riffing on the Tenniel conception of the character.

If we take these two illustrations as the extremes of a continuum, all of his illustrations of Wonderland fit more closely at one or other ends of the continuum. And you get a lot for your money. There are several colour plates and over 100 black and white illustrations – the majority of which are further towards the Mock Turtle end of the spectrum. This might be why when you view his illustrations today, almost 120 years after he made them, a huge number of them still look fresh and fun. To this extent Helen Oxenbury’s work on the story reminds me of Charles Robinson’s. Their styles are quite different, yet there is the same clean and uncluttered sense of fun and freshness. So while I might not quite put Charles Robinson right at the top of the tree of Alice illustrators with Peake and Tenniel, I’d put him pretty close. He’s a very significant Alice illustrator. I don’t think that he ever illustrated Alice Through the Looking Glass. That’s a shame. I’d love to have seen what he would have made of the Jabberwock.

Now, I said that I prefer Charles’ work to that of TH. However, the set of illustrations that TH produced in the same magic year of 1907 are still a fine set and well worthy of your attention. The set that TH produced is a far more homogenous set than Charles’. They were all clearly drawn by the same hand and they clearly all belong to he same work. Which makes it all the more strange that they were combined in the same edition with colour plates by Charles Pears. It looks as if neither artist had seen what the other produced. Their styles are completely different and so is their conception of the characters. But let’s concentrate on the work of TH. With their heavy borders TH’s illustrations almost have something of the quality of medieval woodcut engravings. Each illustration illustrates a whole scene and gives us full backgrounds and foregrounds within a plain, thick rectangular border.

I won’t lie, I have tremendously enjoyed copying TH’s work. Of his more memorable illustrations there’s the turbaned caterpillar and especially the elongated Alice being berated by the pigeon. The use of forced perspective with Alice’s head is something special and is probably my favourite illustration of his scene. But otherwise I don’t include TH in the absolute top branches of the tree because he does often play it safe in his depiction of the scenes. Yes, his Mad Hatter is dark and doesn’t have a 10/6 ticket in his hat. (Charles’ Pears’ does – shame on you Charles.) But it’s still a top hat and he still has a very prominent beaky nose. I like TH’s illustration of Alice with the Gryphon and Mock Turtle, but putting a top hat on the Mock Turtle does nothing to hide the fact that this is still very much Tenniel’s concept of the character. Likewise, while his Alice wears a sailor dress rather than a pinafore dress she is still recognisably a pretty direct descendant of Tenniel’s Alice.

I don’t want to keep harking back to comparisons with his brother Charles’ work but it’s very hard to avoid. If you compare the way that Charles illustrated Alice in the Pool of Tears with TH’s illustration of the scene, they both use swirls of water, but to me TH’s while technically accomplished just doesn’t portray or evoke the same level of emotion. TH’s Alice has an expression just seems to say – oh well, here we are, then, swimming in a pool of my own tears with a mouse. Another day at the office. - While many of Charles’ illustrations look fresh and timeless, all of TH’s illustrations seem to be very much of their time, the Edwardian era.

As I said earlier, I really do enjoy copying TH’s work even though they are not my favourite illustrations of Wonderland and here are two more I’ve just finished.