An every day sight

This time last week I was congratulating myself on clearing my block and writing the rest of chapter three of Alice’s Adventures at the Poles, at making the next illustration and at making a few copies of various illustrations of Bill the Lizard from Wonderland. Today? Well, I haven’t written another word of the story. I haven’t copied another illustration. However, I have produced another illustration for Alice’s Adventures at the Poles and what’s more it’s an illustration showing Alice herself again. Here it is.

This was my second attempt at the illustration. In the first I was quite close to what I wanted, but Alice just wasn’t right – the face and right arm were out of proportion. In this one though, I drew the face first and as soon as I completed it I knew that the face was right. So I made the decision to use a graphite pencil to sketch out the rest of Alice, so that I wouldn’t ruin all the good work with the face and could rub it out if it all went wrong. Now, I have previously mentioned that I have used my oldest granddaughter, Amelia, as my face model and this time Alice really, really looks like her.

I finished Alice before tackling anything else in the illustration because I knew that I could do the polar bear and an appropriate background. That’s not being boastful – I think we all have subjects we know that we can cope with and a polar bear like that is one of mine. In case you’re wondering, the polar bear is standing in a willow pattern bowl. An every day sight down our way.

I won’t lie, I am so delighted with this illustration that it currently adorns the frontispiece of the story as well as featuring in the appropriate portion of the text.