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.

It's been two whole days and I haven't bought another sketchbook since.

The title of this post is a flippant reference to the number of sketchbooks I’ve bought in the last week or two. I have not bought another one since my last post. But I have been using them – specifically the Royal Talens and the Moleskine.

I’m still thoroughly enjoying using my RT book. Since my last post I’ve made these copies:-

The first is Mervyn Peake’s illustration of the White Knight from Looking Glass. One of the things I love about Peake, apart from the fact that his illustrations are brilliant in their own right, is that he so often subverts the expectations that we have based on our experience of Tenniel’s illustrations. Compared to Tenniel’s old buffer, this white knight has a noble, almost cavalier’s head. He has ridiculously elongated legs and neck. Then there’s the horses. Tenniel’s knight rides a fine white charger. Peake’s White Knight rides a bit of an emaciated old nag.

This latest pair of copies in my RT book show different artist’s take on the same scene, where Alice meets the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle. If we start with the ink and watercolour sketch on our left, this is a copy of Helen Oxenbury’s illustration. It (the original) is gorgeous. Helen Oxenbury made the choice to illustrate the Mock Turtle as a tortoise. (It’s a mock turtle because it isn’t a turtle, it’s a tortoise?) That’s a sensible choice – after all, who knows (or cares) about mock turtle soup? It’s a very Victorian joke at best. I love the way that Alice is dancing with the pair. Helen Oxenbury’s Alice is really unselfconscious As a father of four daughters and a grandfather of two granddaughters, her Alice acts like a real little girl.  

Compare this with the picture on our right. This is my copy of Thomas Heath Robinson’s 1908 illustration of the same scene. It’s technically an excellent illustration of the scene. But I think it demonstrates that TH Robinson was following the well beaten path originally marked by Tenniel, rather than doing his own thing like Helen Oxenbury. His concept of the Mock Turtle is essentially Tenniel’s. Yeah, he has a top hat on here but this is still recognisably the same creature that Tenniel illustrated in the same way. It is also very static when you compare it to Helen Oxenbury’s. That for me is part of debt to Tenniel – I’ve made the point before that a significant number of his illustrations look like posed tableaux, rather than moments froze in time.

The last illustration here is my latest illustration for ‘Alice’s Adventures at the Pole’. I’ve gone farther away from life with Sliver the Snake than I did in ay of the previous illustrations. I may redo it with a more naturalistic head on the snake for comparison and see which I prefer.

Forgive me father for I have sinned. I have bought another sketchbook.

So what is it, a week since I last bought a new sketchbook? Eight and a half days actually. Look, I’d just done a bit more business on Etsy and I wanted to reward myself. I think that I’ve mentioned how much I enjoy reading reviews comparing art materials – it’s a vicarious pleasure which is almost as enjoyable as visiting specialist art supplies and stationery shops in person. Several brands tend to come up a lot in dispatches, and one of these is Hahnemuhle.

Hahnemuhle is a German company that began as a paper mill in the late 16^th century. Amongst quite a wide range of products they offer their own travel sketching journal. It’s in the familiar 13x21cm format, and it sits at the more expensive end of the market. Looking today on Amazon the Hahnemuhle 13x21cm travel journal is quite a bit more expensive than the Moleskine equivalent and more than twice as expensive as the Seawhite A5 Classic Sketching Journal. It has about the same number of pages as the Seawhite too. So I bottled it. I didn’t by a Hahnemuhle travel journal. I did, however, buy a rather cute little product that Hahnemuhle make. It’s their Draft and Sketch mini sketchbook, and you can see it in the photograph below. The other sketchbook in the second photo for comparison is the Royal Talens 9x14cm journal I bought a fortnight or so ago.

Mini? My friends, It’s absolutely tiny. It has 60 sides of paper, but the important thing is that the paper is the same weight – 140 gsm – as the Hahnemuhle travel journal. So at least, I thought, at least it should give me some idea of what to expect from the journal.

Okay then, first impressions. It’s lovely paper for fineliner sketching. It has just the right amount of tooth so that the ink makes very neat crisp and clear lines, so much so that I could use a 0.1mm nib for the finer lines as opposed to the 0.05 I’ve been using on other books, and even this I would abandon for a 0.2mm nib. The first sketch I made was the ink outlining for an ink and watercolour copy of a 1908 illustration Harry Rountree made for his 1908 set of Alice in Wonderland illustrations. I enjoyed this so much I decided to gamble and try to make the next illustration for my Alice story “Alice’s Adventures at the Pole”. And another. And another. Learning from my experience with my Royal Talens I decided to distance myself a little, and while I could still be objective about it, put it to the watercolour test.

Hahnemuhle make it perfectly clear in the packaging and promotional material that this mini sketchbook is suitable for dry media. Most sketchbooks of 130 gsm or more make claims that to be suitable for light watercolour. I did think that it was a bit odd for Hahnemuhle not to say something similar, and decided, what the hell, let’s give it a go. Here’s the result.

At first I thought that it was buckling a bit, but frankly it’s not noticeable at all now. It looks like the watercoloured pages in my seawhite sketchbooks do. And if anything, I’d say that the colours are maybe a little brighter and more vibrant. Blow me down. Comparing the pages where I’ve used watercolour I’d say it has performed better than either the Moleskine or the Royal Talens, and at least as well as the Seawhite. And this little feller is not twice as expensive as the Royal Talens equivalent. However that’s a little misleading since there are more pages in the Royal Talens. There’s no pocket in this and no elastic binding, but then it isn’t claiming to be a travel journal. So is it better or worse value than the small Royal Talens? Well, that all depends on what value means to you. But I have to say, using it today has been like using a little bit of quality. Would I buy a Hahnemuhle travel journal now, knowing what I know? At today’ s Amazon price I probably wouldn’t. But I’d love to be given one!

To be original or faithful?

Yesterday was a bit of a bumper day for making copies of illustrations in my new Royal Talens sketchbook. I wrote yesterday about the watercolour test based on a 1908 Harry Rountree illustration of Advice from a Caterpillar, and also showed my copy of his White Rabbit in the page’s tabard.

Later on in the day I took on a TH Robinson illustration of The Pool of Tears. I’m sure that I’ve written about him before, but briefly, T.H. Robinson – Thomas Heath Robinson – was one of a very talented trio of brothers. His brothers were Charles Robinson and William Heath Robinson. William, the most famous of the three, never illustrated Alice to the best of my knowledge, but Charles did, and he produced one of my all-time favourite Alice illustrations, which was also of the Pool of Tears. I wanted to draw Thomas’ illustration of the same scene by way of comparison.

After that I copied two more Harry Rountree illustrations – of the March Hare and the Mad Hatter, and of the Mock Turtle. The Mad Hatter surely must be one of the biggest problems for illustrators since 1907. The Tenniel illustrations of him are so distinctive and have become so ingrained within the public consciousness that an illustrator can be forgiven for thinking long and hard before going too far away from Tenniel’s Hatter. Amongst my favourite other Alice illustrators, Mervyn Peake displays more originality than most. If you look at Rountree’s, he moves away from the oversized head and shortened limbs of Tenniel, but his Hatter still has an exaggerated nose, a tail coat and a top hat. At least he didn’t go the whole hog of having the 10/6 ticket in it.

Incidentally, even Walt Disney didn’t go very far away from the Tenniel original of the Hatter. Disney loved Carroll’s book. One of his earliest cartoons was “Alice’s Wonderland” which combined live action and animation, and led to a series of fifty seven short films. He wanted to make “Alice in Wonderland” as his first feature film, but may have been put off by the fact that MGM produced a live action version in 1933 that bombed at the box office. When he made his 1951 “Alice in Wonderland”, the script did play a little bit fast and loose with the story, including Tweedledum and Tweedledee from “Alice Through the Looking Glass” and leaving out some of the characters from the first book. One character you just couldn’t leave out is the Mad Hatter. If you looked at one of the Tenniel illustrations of the character alongside a still from the film you’d perhaps be struck by the facial differences between them. Disney’s is fleshier and has a bulbous hooter rather than the hawklike beak that Tenniel’s Hatter sports. But look closer and you can see that facial differences aside, he is otherwise pretty faithful, down to the 10/6 label in the hat.

Of course, the Mock Turtle is one of the Wonderland characters excised from the Disney animation. Many illustrators of Wonderland since Tenniel have faced the challenge of the Mock Turtle in three ways – 1) – ot to illustrate the character at all – 2) – To use a similar visual concept of the character to Tenniel’s – 3) To ignore that it’s a ‘mock’ turtle and draw it as a tortoise or turtle. It’s pretty easy to see that Harry Rountree took the second approach. I think it’s technically a fine illustration, but it doesn’t show us anything about the character that Tenniel didn’t do before.

Royal Talens Art Creations Travel Sketchbook - My 1 week verdict

It’s a week now since my new Royal Talens sketchbook arrived. Long enough, I think, to make some observations and comparisons. Since it arrived I’ve made 11 sketches inside it. 10 of them have been ink fineliner sketches, 8 copies of Harry Rountree illustrations of Alice in Wonderland, 1 copy of a Mervyn Peake illustration of Alice through the Looking Glass and the other was an original illustration for my own unfinished Alice story, Alice’s Adventures at the Poles. However I was very conscious of the fact that I had not tried watercolour within it before his morning.

Illustrator Harry Rountree illustrated two editions of Alice in Wonderland – one in 1908 and the other 20 years later. All of his illustrations I’ve copied up to now have been from the 1928 edition. I found some of his 1908 illustrations on the net, and many of them are ink and watercolour. Now, I often fight shy of trying to copy watercolour illustration. When you get right down to it I don’t have the skills to make a decent job of it, which I can do when I’m just sketching in ink. But, here was the perfect opportunity to test how well you can use watercolour in a Royal Talens sketching journal.

Up to this point I have enjoyed using the book so much that I was inwardly saying ‘please don’t let me down.’ I don’t know what it is that I’ve quite enjoyed so much. I like handling the book, the covers feel very similar to a Moleskine but are just a tiny bit nicer to the touch. I like the ivory colour of the paper. My untrained eye can hardly distinguish any difference between the colour of the paper in the RT, and the colour I the Moleskine, although when I scan both the RT comes out far more yellow. Drawing in ink fineliner in the RT is a very similar experience to doing the same in both Moleskine and Seawhite and I haven’t found any of the three to be worse for ink sketching.

So, here’s the Harry Rountree ink and watercolour copy. I’ve posted the scans and photographs, because I don’t feel that my scanner picks out watercolour as well as a photograph does.

My first feeling is one of relief. The colours are, to my mind, at least a little bit more vibrant than they tend to come out in the Moleskine book, which gives them more of a grainy, muted quality. In fact, I think that the RT book takes the colour as well as the Seawhite does. With 140 gsm paper you have to expect some buckling, and it’s similar to the Moleskine on this score. This is one area where the Seawhite – which has slightly lighter 130 gsm paper – performs better than either.

Now, I haven’t yet gone carrying around the RT book in my backpack for days on end, so I don’t actually have any proof whether it would stand up to it as well as the Moleskine and the Seawhite do. But my gut feeling is that it would.

So, of the these three branded travel sketching journals, I would still say that the Seawhite is the best all round option. But I think that Royal Tales is a very acceptable alternative. To me it either matches or outperforms the Moleskine in every way – apart from the lack of the document pocket at the back. And even after you factor in the cost of card and glue to make your own pocket for it, the RT is still considerably cheaper than the Moleskine. I like it. I like it a lot. And before you ask, nobody has offered me a penny to say so (more’s the pity).

Alice Project 3 - Third Illustration

 Without giving the plot (so far) away I will say that I have now completed the first draft of the first chapter of my Alice story. The third illustration comes from earlier in the chapter than the other two. Here it is:-

 

I enjoyed writing out the part of the story which yesterday's illustration accompanied on the page opposite the sketch so I did it again here. You may have noticed that I didn't make this sketch in my new Royal Talens book I've bee working in. So, I lost the courage of my convictions here, and felt sure I was going to produce something awful. So I decided I'd rather mess up my Moleskine rather than the RT. By all means you must hold your own opinion, but I don't think it came out too badly at all. So here's just the sketch - 

What's happening? Ah, that would be telling! And I'm not sure when I'll be telling. 

Maybe Picasso was onto something

Picasso once said, "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."  I didn't understand that the first time I read it, when I was in my teens. By that time I'd long since dropped Art as a school subject, but I was still drawing in my own time, and frankly I was doing my level best to get away from drawing like a child. But now, well, I think I understand what he was getting at.

What brought this home to me was that yesterday I was asked to pick my granddaughter Amelia up from school and look after her for a few hours until my daughter finishes work. When I pick her up she usually plays with her slightly older cousin Ollie - he and his mum, my oldest daughter, live in our house. But Ollie was picked up from school by his Dad and went back to his house yesterday so Amelia was on her own. I asked whether she wanted to play some board games, go over the park or make some pictures. She opted for picture making, much to my delight. We found a picture of a kitten in a book, and started to make our pictures of it. We used a set of coloured pencils I've had for some time now. Here's the pictures:-

Amelia's kitten picture and mine side by side

My picture - nice but at the end of the day it's just a cat

Mimi's picture - not just a cat - but sunshine and showers, a rainbow and hearts. All in all a cornucopia of happiness. 

I'll be honest, I'm a bit blown away by Amelia's picture. Yes, mine is more accurate in terms of reproducing the photo in the book. We began and I took Mimi through steps to draw the eyes and the nose. But then I could see that she was just bursting to get on with it, so I let her go her own way and stopped directing her what marks to make. What burst from the pencils was this.

What I can't do for you is reproduce the commentary she was giving me while she was making it. I wish I'd somehow recorded it. But there is a child's logic to every mark that she made in this picture. It would never have occurred to me to juxtapose sun and rain above the cat, but the way Mimi explained it made perfect sense. Everything in the picture she thought out as she went along, and while I might not be able to explain it now, I just love it. I look at my picture, and I feel a bit of satisfaction since I've used an unfamiliar medium quite well. But I look at Mimi's picture and I feel joy and freedom. 

And isn't that what Art is supposed to be about for us amateurs?

Alice Project - Illustration 2

I’ve had a really lovely morning. Yesterday I posted my first illustration to my Alice story. Up to this morning I had only written the nonsense poem that would make up a part of the first encounter Alice has with other characters. This morning I wrote the whole of this relatively short episode. I thoroughly enjoyed this as a exercise. I knew what I wated to say, but the mental exercise was working out how to say it, how to get in puns and characterisation etc. When I completed it I made an illustration to accompany the episode. Now, I don’t know I I am ever going to share the story with anyone else so for now all I want to say is that it’s a penguin with glasses, a sack and very bushy eyebrows.

I did write out the description of the character when Alice first sees him underneath the sketch which you can see from the whole two page scan. I’m not sure I quite like it as much as the mammoth ad the elephant sketch, but it really isn’t bad at all. I want to do at least a couple more drawings to illustrate what I’ve written so far – watch this space.

Alice Project - New Story, new illustration

Yesterday I mentioned my latest twist on my Alice Project – to write my own Alice story and illustrate it in the hope that being my own story I wouldn’t have to compare myself with anyone else’s illustrations of it and might just produce something I like.  I’m afraid that my attempts to produce any of my own original illustrations to Wonderland or Looking Glass have always resulted in utter pigswill.

As I said yesterday I have the outline of an idea for a plot. I’ve begun writing a part of the story where Alice, in the process of a conversation with two of my characters speculates on why people who don’t like each other for what they are get married. Now, poetry permeates both Alice books, and so this leads the character to recite a nonsense poem that I have made for the occasion. (Please note, the poem is my original work. I can’t imagine why anybody would want to copy it and reproduce it elsewhere, but if you want to do so you must contact me at the email address above and ask.)

Here's the poem –

“The Mammoth and the Elephant’s Daughter

 

A mammoth, and his fiancée

The elephant’s fair daughter

Decided they would walk some way

Across the frozen water.

 

They wandered on and ambled on

Beneath the arctic skies

While talking about this and that

And things that might arise

 

“O Nelly, dear,

Your eyes are clear

Your ears are large and flappy.

But, darling, swear

Some fur you’ll wear

‘Twould make me rather happy.”

 

“O Honey bee,

I cannot see

Why you’d prefer me hairy.

My wrinkled skin

Concealed within

An orange rug? That’s scary!

 

They ambled on and argued on

In tones that were not quite as nice

Not noticing they walked upon

A shelf of thawing, cracking ice.

 

“O Mammoth, sweet

I must repeat

That during our adventures

Your tusks have grown

10 feet alone

D’you need such massive dentures?”

 

“O dearest Nel

How can you smell

For juicy plants and mosses?

We were not meant

To pick up scent

With such a short proboscis!

 

They argued on and bickered on

With neither of them heeding

The ice that they were walking on

Was now from land receding

 

“O Nelly, why?

You make me cry.

These hurtful words confuse me

I don’t expect

My heart’s Elect

To stand there and abuse me

 

O Mammoth, dear

I think it’s clear

There is some passion lacking

Between us two

But – stop ! do you

Too hear that awful cracking?

 

They bickered not and argued not

But huddled close together

And sank into the icy sea,

To stay that way forever.

 

© David Clark 2024

Good, isn’t it? No? Well, please yourselves. I gathered many reference photos of mammoths, female indian elephants and icescapes and snow scenes, and then yesterday, in a mammoth (pardon the pun) three hour session I produced this illustration.

It’s the first time I’ve been happy when I've illustrated anything even remotely connected with Alice other than copies of other people's work , and I’m really pleased. I may well make another couple of pictures to go with the poem – if I do you’ll be the first to know.

The Honeymoon continues

Yes, it does. The main event of the day art wise yesterday will be the subject of my next post, but in between I sketched a couple more copies of Harry Rountree 1928 Alice illustrations in my new Royal Talens art creations journal.

On the left is the March Hare that I showed you in yesterday’s post. Later on, in the afternoon by way of a sort of comparison piece I drew my copy of Harry Rountree’s White Rabbit.

If I’m being honest I had to double check a couple of times that this is the white rabbit, being as he isn’t all that white. He looks as if he’s bouncing with energy, but somehow I don’t quite get the same impression of anxiety and urgency that I do with some other illustrators. Somehow, even though he’s wearing a frock coat he doesn’t come across as quite as dapper as others we’ve seen.

That Sketchbook Honeymoon Period

Life can provide many small pleasures. Getting to work in a new sketchbook is one of them for me. There’s nothing quite like watching your new book start to fill with your drawings. In the last couple of days I’ve made some copies of Alice illustrations by New Zealander Harry Rountree. If you look on my links on the right and click on Alice in Wonderland Illustrations it will take you to all of the copies I’ve made of illustrations by many illustrators and you and read a bit more about Harry Rountree and what I like about his work.

Latest sketches in my new Royal Talens 21x13 Sketching Journal 

Of course, the thing is that while I go through a honeymoon period with my latest sketchbook, it does mean I tend to neglect the others. As a result I have a lot of unused and only partially used sketchbooks. I’m better at keeping an A4 book in reserves until I’ve finished my current one – since Christmas 2023 I’ve filled four A4 books. But my smaller sketching journals, not so much. For example, only last week I took an unfinished Moleskine 21x13 sketching journal which has been relegated from travel duties, and I made a copy of a Mervyn Peake drawing in it. Enjoyed doing it too. I also made half a dozen sketches in my newly bought Royal Talens 9x13cm journal. Well, since opening my new Royal Talens 21x13com journal they are both back in the bag now! Sorry boys, but I’ll come back to you, I promise.

---------------------------------

Coming back to Alice illustrations it occurred to me over he weekend that making my own Alice illustrations might be an idea. Only the thing is that I’ve tried this in the past and I hated my results. I know that I cannot compare with the great illustrators who have illustrated the books in the past. But I can’t help comparing myself, and of course I come up short.

So then it occurred to me – well, you’ll have to write your own Alice story, then you won’t have to compare it to anyone’s work. And the thing is that the bare bones of a story have occurred to me. Not necessarily a novel length story – almost certainly not. In terms of writing it, it’s very daunting when you consider Lewis Carroll’s style, his copious use of puns , the importance of poetry in the two Alice books and other things. But in terms of plotting, structuring it’s not necessarily that difficult. To me both books are essentially picaresque. (For the uninitiated this means that the plot concerns the main protagonist making their way through a series of adventures, encounters and situations that are largely independent of each other). Even though ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ which has the overall story arc of Alice progressing across the ‘board’ trying to become a Queen by reaching the end., is still a set of largely unconnected encounters. In a way it’s almost like a music hall variety bill – the Master of Ceremonies, Carroll himself, introduces a character or group of character – they take the stage – they do their party piece – they leave. The order in which they do so doesn’t matter anything like as much as you might think.

Which is why I have been able to conceive such a little set piece scene, which can slot into my story at some part of it. It involves one of the characters ‘on stage’ reciting a nonsense poem that I’ve written about a Mammoth and an Elephant. The next step is to illustrate it. I’m going to begin later today, and if anything comes of it, I’ll tell you all about it.

Who the Hell is Alice? And why her?

I do keep coming back to Alice, don’t I? In the last 7 days I’ve purchased two new Royal Talens sketching journals, the first 9x13 and the second 21x13 and in both of them my first test sketches have been copies of Alice in Wonderland illustrations. What is it about the book?

I’m sure that I’ve explained how I first came into contact with the books before, but in case I haven’t or you missed it, here goes. My parents never had their own house so they, my two brothers and I all lived in my grandmother’s house. My grandfather died a few years before I was born. My parents didn’t keep a lot of books, but I remember that in the living room on a shelf above the bureau there were some red hardbacked copies of famous novels. There weren’t a huge number of them. I can remember there being David Copperfield, The Mill on the Floss, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Little Women and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (and Alice through the Looking Glass). There was also the copy of Great Expectations that my Mum had won in school, which belonged to a different set.

The photographs shows the set I'm talking about, although these aren't my grandfather's actual books, which are with my brother in Hillingdon now. Sadly I couldn't find a photo which showed Alice in Wonderland or any of the others that I remember. 

These books, the look of them with the gold lettering on their faded red cloth spines, fascinated me from a very early age. My grandfather had bought them. They were published by the Daily Express in 1933. My grandfather would have been 26 years old when they were published, so he could have bought them new. It was two years before he married my grandmother. It’s also possible he bought them second hand later – I just don’t know. I know that they were published in 1933 because I've just googled them, and pictures from sets being sold on ebay have just filled me with nostalgia. My Nan always reckoned that they’d had more of them at one time, but how many they’d had and what happened to the others I don’t recall asking. Too late to ask now.

So, as I said, I was fascinated by them. Time would eventually come when I would read all of them, except Little Women, which I’ve never read yet. Not a conscious choice not to, I just haven’t. I enjoyed all of them except Jane Eyre. But when I was first becoming interested in things around me, the only one I could even try to read was Alice. It helped that Alice had illustrations. At that tender age I didn’t really get much of the story, and some of Tenniel’s pictures frightened me. But then, kids do like to be frightened to an extent. Then, only a couple of years later, there was a kids’ TV series on – it may have been at lunchtimes – when an actor, who may well have been Aubrey Morris read out the stories in a series of short episodes while Tenniel’s illustrations were shown periodically. I was hooked on the stories. This was also when I developed a preference for Looking Glass over Wonderland.

So maybe this is it, that Alice has maintained my fascination because it at least helped to ignite a spark in me of two things which I would come to love very much – drawing and literature. Perhaps – it works as an explanation to me at any rate.

Royal Talens Art Creation - 21x13cm

Yeah, I know, this is getting a little out of hand. So, let’s recap. You know that I bought a Royal Talens Art Creations sketchbook – portrait 9x14cm which arrived on Wednesday? I did like it a lot, and I’ve already made half a dozen sketches in it, all copies of some of Mervyn Peake’s simpler illustrations from Lewis Carroll’s Alice books. Okay.

Yesterday I fulfilled a very short notice commission. It was a one-off detailed pen and ink drawing for a birthday present and it involved five hours’ work. Thankfully the client was delighted – and let’s be honest, I was very pleased with myself as well. It capped off a great day. I mentioned in the previous post that I have recently retired from teaching. I’ll have my teacher’s pension, but in order to cushion the drop in income I’ve taken a temporary job, and yesterday I went in to meet the team I’ll be part of. They were great and I’ll be honest, I just can’t wait to start in a couple of weeks. So I’m sure you get the point – I was feeling happy and satisfied with myself yesterday evening.

Well, that can be a dangerous state to be in. In the couple of days I’ve had my Royal Talens book I’ve been thinking about buying the larger 21x13cm sketchbook. Last night, to reward myself I bought one from Amazon as a present. I did a little bit of research and found out that Royal Talens is a Dutch company, founded in Apeldoorn in 1899. They were just Talens then, until Queen Wilhelmina, obviously a fan, gave them the designation Royal in 1949.

Now, here’s a funny thing. A lot of travel sketchbook manufacturers seem to follow Henry Ford’s dictum of – you can have it any colour you like as long as it’s black.- He was talking about the Model T, which did eventually come in a range of colours, but you know what I mean. Well, not so Royal Talens. I was just about to click to buy a black one when I noticed that the coral-coloured book – exactly the same as the black one in every other way apart from the colour of the covers – was being sold for a pound less than Amazon were selling the black book. All I can guess is that the coral pink version does not sell as well as the black, light blue, green or yellow – which are other colours I’ve noticed that Royal Talens do. Well, look, I have never made a secret of the fact that I am a cheapskate of many years’ standing and my Scottish ancestors would never forgive me if I passed up the chance of saving a mickle in this way.

Royal Talens 21x13 Portrait sketchbook (left) alongside Moleskine equivalent. Spot the difference apart from the colour.

Actually it’s no hardship opting for this colour – it certainly marks it out as different from the Moleskine for example. I use Moleskine for comparison because in terms of physical dimensions this is very, very similar to a Moleskine. Even being a different colour these look very, very similar in most other ways. Even the matte finish of the covers feels similar – maybe the Royal Talens is smoother, but there’s nothing in it really. The paper inside, as we saw with my smaller RT sketchbook is of a very similar ivory tint to the Moleskine. It’s thinner, at 140 gsm to the Moleskine’s 165 gsm, but it’s hardly noticeable to the touch.

The most obvious difference between this Royal Talens sketching journal and other products competing for the same market like Moleskine and Seawhite is that there’s no document pocket at the back. I mean, this is not a huge thing. I like having the document pockets and they do come in handy when I’m travelling around. But it’s not really a deal breaker for me. If I wanted to I could glue a home-made pocket onto the back cover. But if the good people at Royal Talens were to ask me for my opinion I’d tell them it’s just a shame that this one omission makes their journal just slightly less appealing than it would have been.

This is not a review as such, since the new book only arrived this afternoon, and I’ve only had time to make 1 sketch in it. I haven’t tried watercolour on it yet, and I haven’t taken it out on the road yet either. Well, that’ll come and then we’ll be able to see where it ranks against Moleskine, Amazon Basics and Seawhite of Brighton.

Oh, that sketch? Right. Well, you know how I’ve returned to making my own copies of illustrations of Alice in Wonderland that I really like? I’ve made 6 copies of simpler Mervyn Peake illustrations in the little RT book, 1 copy of a simpler Mervyn Peake, 1 Ralph Steadman and 1 Charles Robinson in the Moleskine. In order to christen the new book I decided to have a go at one of Mervyn Peake’s much more complicated and detailed illustrations, which accompanies the chapter ‘Wool and Water’ in ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’. It’s just the first sketch in the book, but I was pleased with the results. It’s a pleasant surface to draw on, just like the smaller RT book. There’s no show through on the other side at all.

Close up of the sketch

Like I said, this is not a definitive verdict yet, but I’ll post again about it when I’ve really put it through its paces.

I Don't Need Another Sketchbook . . . but . . .

Since Monday I’ve officially become a retired teacher. Never a teacher of Art, I hasten to add – I have no qualifications in Art, and I leave it to people to make up their own minds up whether I have any talent or not. I start work in a completely different field in just over a week. But still, having finished teaching a strange sense of wellbeing and pride overtook me at the weekend and I decided to reward myself. At the moment, I don’t need another sketchbook, and I don’t need to try out brands I’ve never used before. But I wanted to.

So this is why I bought my first Royal Talens Art Creations Sketchbook. I’m currently using two A5 or nearly A5 sketching journals so I decided to go with the 9x13cm format. It arrived yesterday. For comparison I have photographed it with the Moleskine large (slightly smaller than A5 (left) and the Winsor and Newton A6 (top right)

I was surprised just how small it is. It’s significantly smaller than the Winsor and Newton A6 sketchbook I bought a while ago. It’s an appealing object. Basically it’s just like a smaller Moleskine style portrait travel journal, complete with bookmark and elastic although it doesn’t have a little document wallet inside which is a bit of a shame. The paper is 140 gsm and the colour of the paper is very similar to the rather ivory hue of the Moleskine. I did a couple of copies of simpler Mervyn Peake illustrations from Alice, and I have to say that I enjoyed it. I didn’t quite get the first sketch right in terms of proportions, possibly due to having to get used to using this smaller format. The white rabbit ad the dodo are  more faithful copies. But I have to say, after all the recent sketching since the mega trip where the sketches have been taking two or three hours each, I really enjoyed these.

It made me want to dig out the Winsor and Newton A6 book. I went off this book a bit. The reason why I bought it – apart from curiosity – was as a way of completing the 30x30 direct watercolour challenge in June. I was struggling to make watercolours pretty much for the first week of the month and I thought making quick watercolour sketches in this little book would enable me to catch up. Only, I just didn’t like the paintings very much. The colours all seemed washed out and I lost interest. For the first time since 2020 I did not complete the challenge. I put the book to one side and thought, I guess sketchbooks this small aren’t for me.

I did dig the book out. Instead of making a copy of a Mervyn Peake Alice illustration I made a copy of one of my other favourite Alice illustrators, Ralph Steadman. 

It was fun, but purely based on enjoyment I preferred working in the Royal Talens. The paper in the W&N book is 170 gsm which is all to the good, and it can certainly handle light watercolour without buckling. But it’s very white compared with the more ivory paper in the Royal Talens. The texture in the Royal Talens book is just slightly smoother and I prefer that too. I do like having perforated pages which is what you get in the W&N.

This doesn’t mean that I’m going to be using this smaller format extensively. But it’s fun and very handy to carry.