OK, so I woke up this morning, and thought - hmm. I'm looking after my two oldest grandchildren today, it being the first day of Half Term week. With the best will in the world, it is not going to be a painting day today. So let's get the fineliners out.
Last year I got myself into a bit of a John Tenniel kick, which became an Alice in Wonderland / Alice Through the Looking Glass kick. It started with a prompt on Sketching Every Day on Facebook, where we were challenge to copy or produce something inspired by John Tenniel. I made a copy of his famous Punch cartoon "Dropping the Pilot". Then I coped a couple of other cartoons. Then I copied something from Alice. Then I did another. And another. In the end not only had I copied more than 20 of Tenniel's originals, but also quite a lot of illustrations by other illustrators of Alice, notably Mervyn Peake and Ralph Steadman.
So when I was stuck for inspiration this morning I thought - I know. Let's do another Alice. Here it is - the iconic illustration of the Duchess with Alice from Wonderland.
Let's ge the self criticism out of the way first, The Duchess' face is not right, not quite. The baby's face is too big, it should be a bit smaller. But there we are, considering how 'busy' the original illustration is I'm really not too unhappy with it.
You know, I'd forgotten just how much I love doing something like this. I've said before that judging by some of his political cartoons I don't know that Sir John Tenniel and I would have necessarily got on very well. But my goodness, I don't half admire the man's skill. In order to copy something like this you have to look, and look, and look. I wouldn't go so far as to say that you do most of the drawing with your eyes, but I would say that your eyes are as important as your hand.
It took about 3 and a half hours, and I bloody loved it.
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