Two Thirds of Alice's Adventures at the Poles Completed

 What a week for my Alice project. Up to now it has been taking anything up to three weeks to make a chapter of the story, text and illustrations. Well, I have written and illustrated chapter 8 in 6 days. Putting this into perspective, I have tried to keep each chapter to between 3500 and 4500 words. Chapter 8 is roughly 3750 words. I am trying to keep to an average of four illustrations for each chapter. I produced 3 completely new illustrations for chapter 8 and adapted one of my own sketches.

One thing I’m very happy about is that this means that 2/3 of the books planned 12 chapters are complete. When I have written the next chapter, then that will become ¾.

I explained in a earlier post how I am often writing before going to work in the morning. Well, working on it a couple of evenings this week when I had the oomph to do it made a big difference.

Well, here’s the illustrations made since my last post:-

Another chapter written and illustrated

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. A fortnight ago I wrote that I’d finished writing chapter 6 and making illustrations for it. On average it has taken about 3 weeks to write and illustrate a whole chapter. Now with chapter 7 the writing came rather easily, and it was completed within a week. However, despite having by my reckoning anything up to five decent opportunities for illustration, I just couldn’t get going with it. My first attempt during the week just wasn’t good enough.

The trickiest thing about this is that I’d started writing Chapter VIII. You see the thing is that in my old job as a teacher I used to get into work about 7 am to have an hour and a half to do things before the children I taught came in. It was absolutely golden time which I’d say was worth about 2 hours at any other time of the day. Well, I don’t go into work in my new job now until 8 am, so that gives me a little bit of time after breakfast but before leaving the house. I don’t write every day, but it’s not that uncommon for me to dash off anything up to five hundred words in a morning. I’ve already written more than a quarter of the chapter.

So, this weekend I girded my metaphorical loins and got down to business. Thus far I’ve only made three illustrations to chapter VII. However, at least this means that I’ve now completed 28 so I’m on target for an average of four per chapter. So without further ado – here’s the pictures – as usual no explanations I’m sorry.

An Arctic Hare and a Baronet

A ewe in a welsh shawl. Would ewe believe it?

Despite the expression he's a very happypotamus

Half of my Alice Illustrations are now complete

Okay, so this time last week I posted that I’ve finished writing chapter 6 of “Alice’s Adventures at the Poles, which means that I’ve finished writing the first half of the text. Now, when I’m writing a chapter of the story, I can’t help mentally noting where I have opportunities for illustrations that I’d like to make. Now, by the end of chapter five I’d included 21 illustrations. My self-imposed target is an average of four illustrations per chapter. 21 by this point meant that I was 1 ahead of target. And as I was writing the chapter I reckoned that there were five clear cut opportunities for illustration.

So, here’s the three I made that completed the twenty four that I needed for the first half of the book.

This is a mynah bird and a snail. Look, you will just have to accept that this all fits in the story.

This is a billy goat working the ticket counter in a station. No, sorry, I’m not giving any more explanation than this at this point in time.

Finally this is a railway carriage on the back of a blue whale, surfacing in a railway station that is rather reminiscent of London’s Paddington Station.

I haven’t scanned it yet but there is a twenty fifth illustration as well. Well, I don’t have a problem doing more than required to meet the average, and if it turns out that I end up with more than the forty eight planned illustration for the novel, then so much the better.

Alice's Adventures at the Poles latest

Right, would you prefer to have a glass that is half full or a glass that is half empty? Well, let me present the glass, and you can decide. During the last week I have finished the first draft of chapter 6 of Alice’s Adventures at the Poles. The story is planned to be written in 12 chapters. So this means that it is now half finished! However . . . – I have not drawn any more illustrations for the story yet. I need at least twenty four illustrations for the first six chapters, and at the moment I only have twenty one. Well, let’s look at the half full glass. I think that there’s maybe half a dozen clear opportunities for illustrations in what I’ve written, so I’m not worried.

The way things work out it’s taking a good three weeks to make a chapter anyway. So it isn’t that unusual for me to do the illustrations only after I’ve written it. But it’s been hard this weekend as well. It’s the time of year when, if I am going to draw my own Christmas Cards, then I need to crack on with it, and that’s what I’ve been doing. I think I’m about halfway there, having completed 8 this weekend.

More evidence on my Thurstan theory

 I've been looking even more closely at Edgar Thurstan's Alice illustrations, and I've spent hours today copying his illustration of Alice in the train carriage in Alice Through the Looking Glass. Here's what Lewis Carroll said, where I have just included the details of who was in the carriage,

“Tickets, please!” said the Guard, putting his head in at the window. . . All this time the Guard was looking at her, first through a telescope, then through a microscope, and then through an opera-glass. At last he said, “You’re travelling the wrong way,”

“So young a child,” said the gentleman sitting opposite to her (he was dressed in white paper) . . . A Goat, that was sitting next to the gentleman in white, shut his eyes . . . There was a Beetle sitting next to the Goat . . . 

Alice couldn’t see who was sitting beyond the Beetle, but a hoarse voice spoke next. “Change engines—” it said, and was obliged to leave off.

“It sounds like a horse,” Alice thought to herself. And an extremely small voice, close to her ear, said, “You might make a joke on that—something about ‘horse’ and ‘hoarse,’ you know.” . . . 

The Horse, who had put his head out of the window. . . " - and that's really all the description that we get of the carriage and its occupants. So, here's my copy of Tenniel's illustration :-

and here's my copy of Edgar Thurstan's

Just for ease of comparison, here's the two of them side by side:-

I am not a lawyer of any kind, let alone a copyright lawyer, but come on! The case for the prosecution presents the following evidence: - 

1) The four figures in the Tenniel illustration are pictured in the same positions in relation to each other as in Thurstan's , and each of them is in the same pose in Thurstan's as in Tenniel's.

2) This is the only illustration of Tenniel's Alice in which she wears a hat of this style. Thurstan's is wearing a hat of the same style. Likewise, the gentleman dressed in paper. We are told he is dressed in paper, but not that he is wearing a hat, yet Thurstan's is wearing the same hat as Tenniel's

3) The interior of the carriage is extremely similar in both illustrations, with the two narrower windows either side of the wider window which is part of the compartment door. 

The evidence for the defence? Well. . . 

1) The man dressed in paper looks like Benjamin Disraeli in Tenniel's illustration. In Thurstan's he doesn't. 

2) There's no horse in Tenniel's illustration, but there is in Thurstan's and likewise, Thurstan shows a passenger to the goat's right while Tenniel doesn't.

3) Tenniel's sketch puts the viewer looking directly straight on into the compartment at eye level with the passengers. Thurstan puts the viewer above the figures to the viewer's right.

The verdict? Well, I think that Odhams wanted the Tenniel illustrations but for whatever reason they wouldn't or couldn't use them - cost perhaps. I don't know, They 'got away with it' if you like. I am pretty convinced believe that Thurstan was deliberately trying to produce something as close to Tenniel's original as possible with the majority of his illustrations for the two books. And fair play, I think this particular one is a fine piece of illustration. It's extremely detailed with a masterly use of hatching, cross hatching and shading. Taking Tenniel's composition and, if you like, rotating it through some forty degrees or so shows real technical skill. 

So I don't feel any great chagrin about the fact that the illustrations that so inspired me as a young kid and made me love the books were not Tenniel's but Thurstan's. Because essentially, the best of them were Tenniel's vision- just filtered through the lens of Thurstan.

That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

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I began writing Chapter VI of "Alice's Adventures at the Poles" today. So you never know, I may make some more original illustrations next weekend. Having said that though I really need to be making more of this year's hand drawn Christmas cards.

My Theory about Edgar Thurstan's Alice illustrations

It’s been quite a week. I retired from teaching officially in August. I was more than ready to finish teaching but not yet ready to finish working. Look, you’re a long time retired (hopefully). So I applied for a temporary position in admin with the NHS. I got the job and began in September. The salary combined with my teacher’s pension leaves us a little better off than we were, as opposed to taking a pretty big drop if we just lived on the teacher’s pension. My thinking was that it is easier to turn a temporary position into a permanent one from inside rather than out. I’ve been loving the job, however the opportunity arose for a slightly different position, doing a very similar job, but it’s permanent. Forty five of us applied. 12 of us were shortlisted for interview. I was offered the job. Even though this was what I wanted and planned, considering my age and inexperience I can’t believe that it has all worked out according to the master plan, and so quickly.

As if that wasn’t enough, my copy of the Odham’s edition of the Alice books, c. 1930, with the illustrations by Edgar Thurstan arrived. Well, the memories and nostalgia it evokes are worth the price of admission by themselves. My copy of an edition that uses Harry Rountree’s illustrations from 1928 came as well, so for now I’d say my Alice collection is complete – although I’m not ruling out looking for a copy of the TH Robinson/Charles Pears either.

Coming back to Edgar Thurstan’s illustrations, the first thing to note is that there aren’t a great many of them. I made it 21 in total for the two books combined. That compares to 92 Tenniel’s. I made the point last week that Edgar’s illustrations mostly owe a lot to Tenniel’s, in both style and content.  This illustration of Alice, the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle is a decent demonstration of my point.

Compare this with Tenniel’s illustration of the same scene –

Here’s the two side by side

Essentially it seems to me that Edgar has taken Tenniel’s sketch and swapped the direction in which Alice if facing, and the positions of the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon. Yes, there are a few slight differences between the characters – the Gryphon lacks ears for example. For the most part though the debt to Tenniel is clear.

Why should this be, though? Well – and I stress that this is just my hypothesis and I have no evidence other than the illustrations themselves – this is what I think. At the time that Lewis Carroll passed away, copyright lasted for just ten years after the owner’s death, However, by the time that Sir John Tenniel passed away the copyright law had changed, with copyright remaining for fifty years after the copyright owner’s death. Thus while the books passed into the public domain in 1907, Tenniel’s illustrations did not until 1965 – incidentally within my own lifetime. So my guess is this. For what is essentially a popular edition, Odham’s might have wanted to use Tenniel’s illustrations, but didn’t because of copyright issues. So I guess they engaged Edgar, telling him to stick to as much of the style and substance of Tenniel’s illustrations as he could without breaking copyright.

And to be fair, the way that he has changed viewpoint, and characters’ positions while still retaining much of the feel of Tenniel’s originals is pretty remarkable, and a demonstration of skill.

However the flip side of this is that Thurstan’s more original illustrations – the croquet match, the mad tea party and the caterpillar – are, to my mind, the weakest of the set. For example, his depiction of the caterpillar gives him face on, which I feel is a mistake as it has none of the care or feel for character that his most derivative illustrations do.

I’ll leave you for now with a question. If you could only draw ten illustrations for Wonderland, which ten would you include. Or to put it another way, which could you possibly leave out?

Chapter V complete

It has taken me 2 or 3 weeks to do so, but I have now finished writing the first draft of chapter V of Alice’s Adventures at the Poles. Just as importantly, I have now also completed the first 21 illustrations for the book, which means I am ahead of schedule by 1.

Last Sunday I posted the first two of these –

During the week I made this one.

I say it as shouldn’t but I love this one. It’s a rare example of a sketch getting better the more that I worked on it.

This morning I made these two: -

You know how I works by now – no explanation of how they work in the story – although I will admit that the second is meant to show the Prince of Whales.