The White Rabbit

This morning I’ve been looking at various depictions of the White Rabbit. If you’ve read many of my previous posts then you’ll probably be aware of how I like to do this. So let’s start with Lewis Carroll’s own words. This is the first thing he tells us,

“suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!” (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it”.

The rabbit reappears in “Who Stole the Tarts?” – “near the King was the White Rabbit, with a trumpet in one hand, and a scroll of parchment in the other.”

By looking at Lewis Carroll’s original manuscript of “Alice’s Adventures Underground” his own illustrations sometimes give us an idea of how he viewed the character. While he didn’t illustrate the white rabbit running past Alice, he did illustrate the white rabbit encountering the huge Alice filling his house. This is my copy-

So the usual caveats apply, Carroll was not a professional illustrator and neither am I. His white rabbit is notable for the fact that it’s really not very white at all. Also, there’s no real attempt to give it the shape or proportions of a rabbit – essentially this is a human figure with a rabbit’s head. Many future illustrators do show the rabbit’s waistcoat, which is mentioned in the text, and in the manuscript the illustration is copied from. It's funny that Lewis Carroll sometimes didn't provide illustrators to episodes in the book which would attract the majority of future illustrators. Oh well. In my opinion it’s not one of Carroll’s best illustrations. Now let’s look at Tenniel:-

The White Rabbit features in other Tenniel illustrations, but it’s always in one of the two guises here. 

You can see that in comparison to Carroll’s Tenniel’s rabbit is truly a white rabbit and it’s a rabbit in human clothes. With the exception of the arms, or course which are human, with human hands. The pocket watch does recur in the work of may other illustrators. As for the herald costume, well, Carroll’s does wear a playing card costume like the Queen’s and King’s. Tenniel’s is more clearly what we’d expect, a page’s tabard.

These next few were amongst the earliest post Tenniel illustrations of Wonderland. The following are copies of the White Rabbit as drawn by Harry Furniss. 

The left hand picture shows a slightly more animated rabbit than Tenniel’s. He is wearing a more sober dark coat than the checked jacket of Tenniel’s. Other than that, though it doesn’t really get away from the master. The arms are still more human like than the rest of the rabbit – it is very difficult to show it holding a pocket watch with rabbit paws. The right hand drawing shows the rabbit going down the rabbit hole, and this gave Furniss the opportunity to make the arms far more paw like.

Another 1907 rendition worthy of consideration is Arthur Rackham’s. Before I show you my copy I should probably warn you that Rackham used some sumptuous, beautiful watercolour illustrations as well as monochrome ones. What I am going to show you is my copy of a portion of one of these colour plates showing the white rabbit. Now, please remember Rackham was a master and I am not. All this copy can do is give you an idea of the way that Rackham depicted the character.

Rackham’s rabbit is dressed in a high Victorian frock coat with bow tie and all in all he looks a little bit of a dandy. Rackham chooses to dispense with the pocketwatch beloved of many other illustrators. Like Tenniel, though, and Harry Furniss he can’t get away from human arms and hands.

Let’s move on to Harry Rountree.

The watercolour on the right is a copy of Rountree’s 1908 illustration while the drawing on the left is a copy of his 1928 illustration. Both of them are similar to Tenniel’s. It’s interesting that he decided to give the later version something that looks more like a bugle.

He gets further away from Tenniel in both of his versions of the White Rabbit in everyday clothes. They are actually pretty similar anyway. Both of them wear long tailcoats and both of them seem rather taller than most depictions of the same character. I’d also say that their bodies are just a bit more human than rabbit too. As with a lot of Rountree's 1928 work there's tremendous movement going on. This rabbit literally has jumped up, but then he isn't quite the jumped up self-important character that I ted to see in my mind's eye when I read the book.

One more golden (age) oldie then before we come forward in time. This is how Charles Robinson depicted him in his herald uniform.

I’ve commented before on Robinson’s two distinct styles used for his Wonderland illustrations. This is in a similar vein to his mock turtle, a rather stripped back, minimalist line drawing with contrasting areas of black and white. One thing to note is the way that Robinson does try to give the rabbit paws rather than hands. I’m not sure that this is a very good idea. You see, to me the use of paws rather than hands is rather undercut by the way that he still seems to have pretty human arms.

So how did my fave Alice illustrators of the second half of the 20^th century do it? Let’s start with my copy of Mervyn Peake’s White Rabbit. Here it is beneath.

I don’t know why, but the first time I saw this illustration I thought it looked more like a mouse. Now, those are clearly rabbit ears, so I don’t really know why I thought so. Compare this with Tenniel’s. He does have his pocket watch out. But typically, Peake’s is moving while Tenniel’s is standing still. Like Tenniel’s this one wears no trousers.  but unlike Tenniel’s he doesn’t have very rabbitlike legs, even though he does wear shoes which seems just a little strange, and he does have a tail. I’m interested to see him wearing a bowler hat. Did Peake have a busy commuter in mind? I’m pretty sure the next one did.

This is Ralph Steadman’s white rabbit– well, my copy of it anyway. This is one of the Steadman illustrations that I love. I’m maybe influenced by the Disney animation, but I do think that the white rabbit should be this harassed character, obsessed with the possibility of being late. Steadman, like Mervyn Peake also gives the white rabbit a bowler hat. The pocket watch has no actual hands or numbers marked on it which I’m sure is deliberate. As well as the bowler hat, Steadman also gives the rabbit a pair of pinstripe trousers. This just adds to the self-important commuter vibe and it’s something he gives to quite a few of the characters in his Alice illustrations. I do think that this and another Steadman illustration of the same character really capture the uptight nature of the character better than anyone else does.

Let’s finish with Helen Oxenbury.

While Ralph Steadman’s illustrations often seem to have exploded from his pen, Helen Oxenbury’s often seem to have just calmly been ushered onto the page. I like several things about her White rabbit. Like Tenniel she hasn’t just given him a plain jacket. The spots, like the checks that Tenniel’s wears give us just a hint of vanity. This is a more thoroughgoing rabbit than most, although the nearest arm is conspicuously human. I like the frilly cuffs and shirt too, which again show us his vanity. But it’s the posture and the expression which really sell it to me. Come on, be honest, we’ve all worked for or with someone like this, haven’t we?

An every day sight

This time last week I was congratulating myself on clearing my block and writing the rest of chapter three of Alice’s Adventures at the Poles, at making the next illustration and at making a few copies of various illustrations of Bill the Lizard from Wonderland. Today? Well, I haven’t written another word of the story. I haven’t copied another illustration. However, I have produced another illustration for Alice’s Adventures at the Poles and what’s more it’s an illustration showing Alice herself again. Here it is.

This was my second attempt at the illustration. In the first I was quite close to what I wanted, but Alice just wasn’t right – the face and right arm were out of proportion. In this one though, I drew the face first and as soon as I completed it I knew that the face was right. So I made the decision to use a graphite pencil to sketch out the rest of Alice, so that I wouldn’t ruin all the good work with the face and could rub it out if it all went wrong. Now, I have previously mentioned that I have used my oldest granddaughter, Amelia, as my face model and this time Alice really, really looks like her.

I finished Alice before tackling anything else in the illustration because I knew that I could do the polar bear and an appropriate background. That’s not being boastful – I think we all have subjects we know that we can cope with and a polar bear like that is one of mine. In case you’re wondering, the polar bear is standing in a willow pattern bowl. An every day sight down our way.

I won’t lie, I am so delighted with this illustration that it currently adorns the frontispiece of the story as well as featuring in the appropriate portion of the text.

There Goes Bill

You already know that it’s hard for me to find time for drawing in the evenings since starting my new job so I won’t go through all that again. Still, this weekend I’ve managed to work through the block I’ve had on writing the next chapter of “Alice’s Adventures at the Pole”. I haven’t finished it yet, but I think about 1000 more words will do it and I know exactly what to write and how to get to the end of the chapter. I’m just not forcing it. I will possibly finish writing the chapter this evening.

In celebration I spent quite a bit of time yesterday working on an illustration. In my first illustration showing Alice’s features I spent a long time before getting it right and the final version was actually my third attempt. Well, yesterday I spent quite a long time on the first attempt at the next illustration, before realising that it wasn’t going to work. 

Yes, that is a Walrus, and yes, I am conscious that one of the most famous and beloved poems in the Alice books is “The Walrus and the Carpenter” recited by Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Looking Glass. Well, this is the same character. If it was good enough for Lewis Carroll to resurrect characters from the first book in the second, then it’s certainly good enough for me. I shan’t at the moment explain just how he features in the story though.

The connections with Tenniel’s Walrus are fairly obvious. Although my head is more detailed than Tenniel’s, the clothes he wears are very similar, with the spotted bow tie being the most obvious difference. Tenniel’s wears a plain bow tie. However I did do something different with the flippers. Tenniel’s walrus has front flippers that are rather more like a seal's. They are a little more elongated than a walrus’ flippers and they have little definition. With my walrus I exaggerated the qualities that make a walrus’ flippers different from a seal’s, shortening them a little and highlighting some of the detail.

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Well, that’s my Alice story and illustrations. On Friday I made some more copies. Last week I looked at the way some different illustrators chose to illustrate the Hatter. This week I wanted to look at another character who I think is difficult to be original with, namely, Bill the Lizard.

This is what Lewis Carroll wrote,

“she made out the words: “Where’s the other ladder?—Why, I hadn’t to bring but one; Bill’s got the other—Bill! fetch it here, lad!—Here, put ’em up at this corner—No, tie ’em together first—they don’t reach half high enough yet—Oh! they’ll do well enough; don’t be particular—Here, Bill! catch hold of this rope—Will the roof bear?—Mind that loose slate—Oh, it’s coming down! Heads below!” (a loud crash)—“Now, who did that?—It was Bill, I fancy—Who’s to go down the chimney?—Nay, I shan’t! You do it!—That I won’t, then!—Bill’s to go down—Here, Bill! the master says you’re to go down the chimney!”

“Oh! So Bill’s got to come down the chimney, has he?” said Alice to herself. “Shy, they seem to put everything upon Bill! I wouldn’t be in Bill’s place for a good deal: this fireplace is narrow, to be sure; but I think I can kick a little!”

She drew her foot as far down the chimney as she could, and waited till she heard a little animal (she couldn’t guess of what sort it was) scratching and scrambling about in the chimney close above her: then, saying to herself “This is Bill,” she gave one sharp kick, and waited to see what would happen next.

The first thing she heard was a general chorus of “There goes Bill!” 

This little episode where giant Alice boots Bill the Lizard back up out of the chimney has proved a very attractive one to illustrators through the years. Now, I do think that a lot of illustrators have drawn on Tenniel’s illustration of Bill. However, I also believe that Tenniel himself drew on Lewis Carroll’s original.

If you’ve followed my blog posts on the illustrations of the Alice books, then you’ll probably know that Lewis Carroll first wrote some of his stories down at the urging of Alice Liddell, and presented the handwritten manuscript to her as a gift for Christmas 1864. The manuscript contained over 30 of Carroll’s own illustrations to the story. It is now in the British Library.

Carroll took advice about publishing the story with his own illustrations after which he engaged John Tenniel to provide the illustrations. So before we look at any of Carroll’s illustrations let’s accept a couple of facts.

Lewis Carroll never claimed to be an artist or an illustrator.

The first facsimile of Carroll’s original manuscript was never published until a relatively short while ago, so during his lifetime only a handful of people would ever have seen his illustrations.

So, bearing that in mind, here’s my copy of Carroll’s own Bill illustration.

I’ve never copied one of his illustrations before, partly because he was an amateur, and I’ve been afraid that my amateurish deficiencies might magnify his. I think that the Bill illustration is one of his better ones. For one thing the mathematician clearly knew a bit about perspective, from the way he drew the roof and chimneys. It looks to me as if, like many young men of his class and background, he probably had lessons in drawing when he was growing up, as he does use some shading and I’ve already mentioned the perspective.

Okay, now let’s have a look at Tenniel’s –

So one glance comparing the two shows that this is the work of a very accomplished masterful illustrator, while Carroll’s is the work of an amateur. Tenniel’s Bill is more lizard like as you’d expect. He was a master of shading and uses it far more effectively and extensively than Carroll could. He knows that Bill and the chimney are what’s important to the scene so doesn’t include any more than this.

Now look again and see just how Tenniel has drawn (pardon the pun) from Carroll. Both Bills are in pretty similar positions. The shape of the tail makes me think of a snake rising from a snake charmer’s basket. Carroll’s Bill seems to hover in mid-air, while the only thing about Tenniel’s illustration to suggest any movement at all is the smoke rising from the pot underneath him.

Compare this with the copy I’ve recently made of Harry Rountree’s Bill.

The composition to me draws on Tenniel’s which as we’ve seen draws on Carroll’s. Like Tenniel, we see the chimney pot and Bill coming out of it, just as with Tenniel. As fine an illustrator as Harry Rountree, though, wouldn’t just largely copy Tenniel. So he has Bill upside down, which to my mind works really well. Harry Rountree was renowned through his life as a great illustrator of animals and birds, and his Bill is even more convincingly Saurian than Tenniel’s. Unlike Tenniel, Rountree uses motion lines and has soot rather than smoke being expelled with Bill. This gives it a really explosive quality. It’s my favourite illustration of the scene.

We’ve seen before that one of the illustrators who often got further away from Tenniel than most others was Mervyn Peake. Here’s his Bill.

Like Rountree he chooses to use motion lines, but doesn’t depict the chimney. Bill’s whole body is curved sinuously and he’s fully clothed. It’s an interesting choice, but for me it’s a rare occasion when one of Mervyn Peake’s illustrations doesn’t somehow give the scene the movement that you’d expect based on what he achieved with other scenes from the story.

So I’ll finish this post with a look at my copy of what Ralph Steadman did with this scene.

It’s very easy to look at Ralph Steadman’s illustrations of both Alice books and say, well, they’re nothing like Tenniel’s. And of course when you put them side by side it’s far easier to see the differences than the similarities. But it’s still Bill rising head first out of the chimney – and that’s what Tenniel drew. This has far more of an explosive quality than Tenniel’s – like Harry Rountree he uses motion lines underneath Bill, and there’s soot being expelled along with the lizard. The originality of this sketch, apart from the comical expression on Bill’s face, is the way his cap is rising faster than he is, suggested by the motion lines. I’m intrigued that Ralph Steadman gave him a cap – was he possibly influenced in this by the depiction of Bill in the Disney film of the fifties?

Sketching the Hatter

Let’s start with a bit of context. In the summer I officially retired from being a teacher. Last Monday I started in my new proper job, a temporary position working in admin for the Community Dental Service, part of the NHS. I’m enjoying it a lot, however it does mean that I don’t have the time to draw and paint during the day and having been staring at a screen all day my eyes are too tired when I get home. So I haven’t made a huge number of pictures this week.

However, I have been looking more closely at the way that Tenniel’s successors have chosen to portray the Mad Hatter. Before that though, it’s worth noting that from his very first appearance of the Mad Hatter in Wonderland in Chapter VII – A Mad Tea Party, Carroll tells us what the Hatter says and what he does, but not what he looks like. Oh, and he never calls him the Mad Hatter either. He is first mentioned in the book when the Cheshire Cat offers Alice the chance to go one of two ways – one way she’ll meet a hatter, and the other a march hare, and he says that they’re both mad. The tea party doesn’t even appear in Carroll’s original manuscript “Alice’s Adventures Underground, so Carroll never illustrated him. So we have to start with Tenniel, and it must be fair to assume that Carroll was happy with the choices that Tenniel made. As always all of the illustrations on this page are my own freehand copies of the originals.

Despite never appearing in the original manuscript Carroll must have liked the Hatter, for he brought him back in Looking Glass. Across the two books Tenniel included the character in no fewer than 7 illustrations. In Tenniel’s illustrations he is a small man with short limbs and an overly large head. His most distinctive facial feature is his beakish overly large hawk nose. He wears a large spotted bow tie, and a top hat which has a ticket stuck into the band saying ‘In this style 10/6”. His hair is long and just a little wild. As I said, Lewis Carroll wasn’t exactly backwards at coming forwards when Tenniel did something he didn’t like with the characters so he must have been happy with this visual representation.

Tenniel’s is the definitive depiction of the Hatter, so much so that subsequent illustrators have found it difficult to get away from it. I haven’t yet copied Arthur Ransome’s, yet I have copied illustrations by his contemporaries Harry Furniss and the Robinson brothers, Charles and Thomas. Here’s Harry Furniss:-

At first glance this doesn’t seem to look like Tenniel’s Hatter, but that probably has more to do with the great animation of this figure. Harry Furniss was a colleague of John Tenniel’s so it’s no great surprise that this does actually bear similarities to Tenniel. There’s the top hat with its ticket – although we can’t read what’s written on it. The high collar is very reminiscent of Tenniel’s. The nose is overly large, like Tenniel’s. This one does at least look a little madder – the hair is more wild and the eyes are popping.

Charles Robinson’s illustration of the Hatter looks a million miles away from Tenniel’s at least. He is dark haired and younger looking. He wears a top hat, but the hat he does wear is upside down which I guess is the concession to madness. He also has a remarkably long nose although his is much straighter than Tenniel’s.

Charles’ brother Thomas Henry (T.H.) Robinson’s illustrations of Wonderland are to my eyes less original and more traditional than Charles’ despite being made at pretty much the same time. His hatter is quite a tall figure with a head that is much more in proportion to his body – if anything it’s a little small. His hair is dark and short. However he wears the traditional top hat, albeit one without a ticket.  Again, his nose is overly large, but all in all he looks very sane.

Harry Rountree also illustrated the Mad Hatter as early as 1908, and then again in 1928. The 1908 illustrations are sumptuous watercolours, and in this edition the Hatter is clearly recognisable as a pretty close cousin of what we’ve seen before. His top hat has a rounded top, but his nose is very large. His concession to madness is having what looks like rolled up paper cones in each ear. 1928’s Rountree hatter is facially pretty similar to the 1908 version. The hat is a true top hat, and to be honest although the illustration is as technically well done as all of Harry Rountree’s work it just seems to lack a little originality.

Coming forward to the immediate post war period, Mervyn Peake at least gives us something completely different from Tenniel. Or at least, almost completely different.

Mervyn Peake’s hatter has an overly large nose and his hair is rather wild but those are the only similarities he bears to Tenniel’s. I purchased a second hand combined copy of both Alice books with Mervyn Peake’s illustrations during the last week, and I’m bowled over by it. I’ve written before about how, as much as I adore Tenniel’s work, his illustrations to the books are sometimes a bit static and this is a criticism you just cannot make about Peake’s work. Peake’s hatter seems to wear a mad combination of hats of different styles and I love the way there seem to be plants sprouting out of the top of it.

Ralph Steadman’s illustrations to both Alice books, from the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies are marmite to me – I either love them, hate them, or love them and hate them. I think his Hatter is in the last category. To me, the hare and the hatter look completely under the influence of some kind of narcotic – both are conspicuously smoking something and this is something that Lewis Carroll never wrote. The Hatter looks more animal than human here, although in other illustrations his face is more clearly human. Making this copy helped me appreciate the illustration more, but I can’t say that I really like it. But, it is without doubt something worlds apart from Tenniel. It’s interesting that Ralph Steadman chose to concentrate on the mad aspect of the character than the hatter. Nowadays we don’t have hatters any more. Maybe this is because of the association with Alice – we have milliners. The only concession to his profession with Steadman is what appears to be a bowler hat, and that is almost lost amongst headphones and other bits of headgear.

After the madness of Steadman’s Hatter it’s a relief to come back to the relative cosiness of Helen Oxenbury’s 1999 Hatter. As a whole set I find Helen Oxenbury’s illustrations really bring out the lightheartedness and fun in the books. Her Hatter is one of the smallest nosed depictions, and one of the fleshiest faced. He wears three of what looks like a cross between a trilby and a fedora, each perched on top of a slightly larger version. He also has the kind of moustache associated with a ‘spiv’ of the forties and fifties.

Third time's the charm

I wrote the last post about being unable to come up with a satisfactory illustration for “Alice’s adventures at the Poles” showing Alice’s face. Well, I didn’t give up. I decided to have a third attempt, and the third time proved to be the harm. As with previous posts I’m not going to explain the story, or the part of the story that this illustrates. I’m certainly not going to be giving away a lot about the story until I’ve written the whole thing. But here’s Alice.

I explained about most of the choices I made about costume etc. in a post last week, so I won't go over all of that again now. But at least I now know what the front and back of my Alice looks like and that can only be to the good. 

Struggling -

Yeah. I’m struggling to make an illustration of Alice, showing her features, that I actually like at all. Yet I cannot sketch her from behind for every illustration she features in. I know which incident I want to draw, which involved Alice and two flatfish, but actually getting it satisfactorily onto the page is a different matter. I’ve draw two designs and I don’t like either of them. I will have to give it a lot more thought. Watch this space.

In the meantime, here’s a few more copies from the last couple of days:-

Harry Rountree

Harry Rountree

Helen Oxenbury

Charles Robinson

Charles Robinson

Alice finally makes it into an illustration

Here’s a fact you didn’t know – maybe. Alice herself is depicted in only about half of John Tenniel’s illustrations of the two Alice books. There’s two ways you can look at that. On the one hand you can say – hey, that shows you don’t have to include Alice in all of your illustrations. On the other hand it does show that you can’t avoid illustrating her in a fair proportion of them.

So, I’ve written two and a wee bit chapters of “Alice’s Adventures at the Poles” so far. Up to last night I had made 7 illustrations. Only one of them featured Alice, and that one only showed her tiny legs. I’ve been putting it off. There’s reasons for this. I put it off so that I could a least make some decent illustrations and start to build up a little confidence. But then there’s also the question you have to think about when you’re illustrating Alice – how close to the original are you going to go?

In the last day or two I’ve made copies that show how Helen Oxenbury, Mervyn Peake and Charles Robinson each illustrated Alice. Each one of them went away from Tenniel, and so did many of the other illustrators of the books over the years. But then, they’re all illustrating the original stories. It makes sense to do something different with your depiction of the story because you want to put your own stamp on it and find a little bit of originality.

But. My Alice illustrations have to fit my new, original story. The originality is inherent. It makes sense for me to use a lot of the visual vocabulary that John Tenniel uses for the way he presents Alice, as a reassurance to the reader that this is still the same Alice as in the original stories. 

Very pleased with my first illustration of Alice. If I can get her features in a way that I like when I draw them I will be delighted.

If you look at my illustration you’ll see that she is wearing a traditional pinafore dress and has long hair. Differences are that my Alice’s hair is a little darker, and braided where Tenniel’s had an Alice band. I made the decision that I was going to use my older granddaughter as a face model – and Alice’s head is based on a photo of her. I fought a little shy of depicting her features in this first one -  that’ll come now I’ve worked out the way to go with her costume, hairstyle and proportions.

For a encore I made another version of my illustration of the snake that Alice encounters. Here’s the original.

Now, for one of my original drawings it isn’t badly done at all, especially considering that I was working it out as I went along. The slight issue that I had with it was that the snake’s head was a bit too cartoony. I had a lightbulb moment this morning about it. I’ve been writing notes about the background to everything I’ve written – which I’ve enjoyed every bit as much as writing the story and making the illustrations. While writing the note about the episode with the snake, I explained that a piece of advice he gives – when flattering royalty, lay it on with a trowel – originated with Benjamin Disraeli. Apart from the fact that it’s appropriate advice for him to give at this point of the story, I also used it because some people think that Tenniel used Disraeli a couple of times in his illustrations for Looking Glass – the man in the newspaper hat sitting opposite Alice in the train compartment does bear some resemblance to him and some think hat the Unicorn represents Disraeli while the Lion represents William Ewart Gladstone.

So it became obvious to me – I should give my sake Disraeli’s head! It needed just a tiny bit of tweaking of the description of the snake in the text to make it work. Clock, mirror and picture frame are all inspired by a illustration in Looking Glass.

To me this is the first illustration in which I’ve used just a touch of the grotesque – which is one of the things I like so much about Tenniel’s work.