Alice and the Collector's Gene

My son in law Dan – who is one of my best friends as well – and I will both admit to possessing the collector gene. Luckily for Dan his wife, my daughter Jess, inherited it from me, so they’re well matched in that respect.

Of course, the ‘collector gene’ is not genetic. Collector or collecting behaviour is influenced by a wide variety of factors. But it seems to be true that some of us are more susceptible to the desire to collect than others. I have a number of small collections of different things. The fact that I’m only going to discuss one of them should let you know that I don’t feel that this is an altogether healthy state of affairs. But as Shakespeare once wrote – Above all else, to thine own self be true.

It started a few weeks ago. I went looking on eBay for a copy of Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass, in a set published by the Daily Express in the 30s. This was the book that inspired me when I was very little.

I didn’t find it.

I did, however, find a combined edition of the two books with the Mervyn Peake illustrations for a very, very good price. So I bought it. 

Then a week or two later I thought -I’d love a combined edition with Ralph Steadman illustrations- There is actually a method to this. My thinking is I might be able to find illustrations in the books that you don’t see on the internet. I found one – not cheap cheap, but considering the sumptuousness of the book it was extremely reasonable.

The thing is, once you have a couple, you have a collection starting. In the last seven days I’ve bought editions with the Arthur Rackham illustrations, 

and the Charles Robinson illustrations. 

Also, in my hunt I did see a ridiculously cheap edition with Rene Cloke’s 1944 illustrations. And the thing is – I don’t even like Rene Cloke’s illustrations that much. I can appreciate the skill, but they don’t speak to my conception of Alice. But it was so bloody cheap I couldn’t leave it!

Which, you may have worked out, leaves Harry Rountree alone of my absolute favourites, whom I have yet to obtain a copy of. Don’t worry – I bought one on ebay today! Collector’s gene – gotta love it, ain’t you?

If I can speak a little in my own defence, at least I'm not trying to buy ridiculously expensive first editions. It's the illustrations in the books that are valuable to me. 

Plugging away at Chapter V

At the moment it is taking me a fortnight or more to write a whole chapter of Alice’s adventures at the Pole. I managed about five hundred words of chapter five last week, to which I added another 1000 words yesterday. It’s only just a tiny bit more than a third written so far. However, what I had written did inspire me to make two of the illustrations for the chapter. Here’s the first.

As I’ve said on previous occasions when posting my own illustrations to my own story, I don’t want to start telling the story before I’ve finished writing it. However this one is rather self-explanatory. Alice turns into a fish.

I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve come up with here. I don’ know if you’ve ever seen Monty Python’s rather disappointing last film, “The Meaning of Life”. One of the devices for linking – or trying to link – the disparate narrative elements of the film is a group of fish in an ornamental fish tank, upon whom the Pythons’ heads have been superimposed. Bearing in mind the technological limits of film special effects in the early 80s, it’s not bad. That kind of inspired the appearance of the Alicefish in my illustration.

This is the second illustration, of a crab with a violin case holding onto Alice’s lateral fin. No explanations for this.

In what I’ve written so far of the chapter I certainly can see an opportunity for another illustration, but I’m going to need to finish the chapter in order to make a full appraisal of what I can do. Who knows, maybe I’ll make more than two more illustrations to this chapter? As long as I can keep the ball rolling towards the forty eight in total that I’m aiming for.

One third is Done

I don’t know if I explained this in a previous post. Forgive me if I did. I’ve planned to write “Alice’s Adventures at the Poles” in 12 chapters. Both Wonderland and Looking Glass are written in 12 chapters so if that’s good enough for Lewis Carroll then it’s good enough for me. So, with regards to illustrations, Tenniel made forty two for Wonderland and fifty for Looking Glass. I decided to split the difference. Averaging at four illustrations per chapter it works out at forty eight. That’s how many I plan.

Now, that doesn’t mean I have to limit myself to only four per chapter, or that each chapter must have four. But by this time last week I’d written the first four chapters – or a third of the book. At that time I had made

7 illustrations for chapter 1

2 illustrations for chapter 2

2 illustrations for chapter 3

2 illustrations for chapter four. So even allowing for my bumper crop of illustrations for chapter 1 I am still 3 short for the first third of the book.

So the obvious thing was to try to make another illustration for each of the first three chapters. Ideally, Alice would feature in each of them. Yesterday I went for it, and produced the three – one of which I was not satisfied with and did it again this morning.

When I’m doing an illustration that features Alice herself then I tend to work with pencil first. I haven’t worked like this for years, but getting Alice as close to right as I can is difficult. Even when I was just copying Tenniel’s Alice illustrations I never got Alice’s head quite right. So here’s the three illustrations in chapter order.

This is the illustration to chapter 2. It shows Alice with the main supporting character of the chapter. I liked the way that I’d draw him so much that I did actually go back to the text and change the written description to fit the illustration a little bit better. Alice here draws heavily on one of my own earlier illustrations although I did change the position of the arms and legs. In case you’re wondering the other character is holding a snowball. You’ll have to take my word for it that this is important. 

This is my new illustration for chapter three. I spent a longer time doing the first version of this yesterday than I spent on either the illustration above or the one below, both of which I’ve kept and think are far better. Well, look, the whole purpose of starting Alice’s Adventures at the Poles was to give me a chance to make original Alice illustrations which I think are as good as I can make them. And that one just wasn’t. This is better, because the Alice figure is better. Not great, mind you, but as good as I think I can do. Well, engaged in this activity anyway.

Then, after all that unsuccessful effort this next one just seemed to flow from pencil and pen. Alice’s head is again inspired by a photo of my oldest granddaughter, Amelia, although in this case she does look just a little more like Amelia’s mum, my daughter Jenn. In the background I rather cheekily used a domed greenhouse which features in one of Tenniel’s illustrations of Alice talking to the King, Queen and Knave of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland”

So a bit of a mixed bag, but at least all three of these are good enough for me to allow them into my book. And if you’d told me when I started writing it that I’d be able to make sixteen of my own Alice story illustrations for the first third of the book I’d have called you a bloody liar, so that’s something.

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I've been expanding my collection of copies of Alice with illustrations by my favourite illustrators. I bought a combine Mervyn Peake copy a few week's ago, and last week a sumptuous Ralph Steadman combined edition. I love them both. My next target is a copy with the 1928 Harry Rountree illustrations. Watch this space. 

Another illustration

Okay, today I am not going to do what I’ve done the last couple of Sundays. I haven’t made any copies of any Alice illustrations since last Sunday. Try to contain your disappointment. So we’re not going to discuss the ways that different illustrators have illustrated the same scene or character across the years.

This is not to say that I have been totally idle. For one thing I have been starting to write chapter IV of “Alice’s Adventures at the Poles”. The more difficult thing is that unlike the previous chapter, I have had to think about how this chapter contributes to the overall narrative. Also, I want to go a little further with it than I’ve been before by making Alice herself a little more proactive. Most of what she has done so far in Adventures at the Poles has been reacting to what others do or say.

Nonetheless even with all this to bear in mind I have written about a third of the chapter, introduced a new character and also a plot device which will be used in the future, and I know where the chapter is going to go, it is ‘just’ a matter of writing it. This is not like the block I felt before I could write the rest of chapter III.

I have also produced another illustration. Here it is. 

It’s a larger and more complex illustration than pretty much any I’ve so far made for the story. The way I constructed it – for this illustration out of all the ones I’ve made for this story was more constructed than draw, was this. First I drew the Alice figure. Although this is my Alice – check out the braids on the hair and the dress that she is wearing – her pose is a deliberate reflection of the pose adopted by Tenniel’s Alice when she is looking up at the Cheshire Cat. The legs are in a different position, and Alice is looking to the left rather than the right, but the inspiration is pretty clear. Last week, when I got he Alice I wanted the rest of the illustration just flowed, that’s why I tried to use the same technique.

I followed Alice’s eye line and sketched in the cuckoo from the clock. I’d made my task hard for myself by the way that I described how he was dressed and indeed I did go back to the text to simplify it a little bit. All of the elements of the illustration were worked out in graphite pencil first. So, for example, I drew Alice in pencil, then inked her in. Then I drew the cuckoo in pencil and after much erasing and going back to square one-ing, I inked him in. Then the cuckoo clock. My cuckoo clock is a hybrid design taking elements from several reference photos. I felt as if I was on home ground with the clock, since this is essentially a building and I feel very much at home sketching buildings.

I’m planning to write 12 chapters. It makes sense, there are twelve chapters in Wonderland, and twelve in Looking Glass. Working on an average of four illustrations per chapter, that means I’m aiming for a total of forty eight. I’ve currently made 13 illustrations, although only 12 of these will be used in the book because two of them are different versions of the same subject – Sliver the Snake. This doesn’t mean that each chapter must have four illustrations and only four. At the moment chapter 1 has 7 illustrations, while both chapters 2 and 3 have two illustrations each, and chapter four 1. It does mean though that I am behind in terms of illustrations. What I plan to do is keep making them the way that I have been doing, then total it up when I’ve finished the story. Then I will go back over it and make a plan for what illustrations I should make to complete the set. For example, chapters 2 and 3 are both light on illustrations at the moment, so both would be candidates for more.

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?