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.

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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.