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.