Or the Fine Art of Pentimento, Peccadillo and Palimpsest
Occasionally, a picture goes awry.
Some images have tales to tell independantly to what’s actually pictured in them, some come a long way, and many abruptly come to a premature conclusion.
The snapshot of the sketchbook shows a quick sketch done for the Beowulf movie project, while Roger Avery was still planning on directing it himself. You’ll recognize more than a hint of Egon Schiele in Grendel’s pose; Roger desired to capture that awkward raw equipoise that Schiele’s nudes display so uncomfortably. So, I dug out my Seamus Heaney translation of the story, found John Gardner’s astonishing retelling in a used-book shop, raided the local library (disappointment) visited the local bookshop (“Yes, sir, of course we can order it for you, count 4 to 6 weeks.”; disappointment bis) and a good friend’s ample bookshelves, where I found what I needed. (Thank goodness for friends with groaning bookshelves dedicated wholly to history and art!) Armed with a good tome on Schiele’s oeuvre, a few pictures of the actor he had in mind, and of course the revised script by Roger Avery and Niel Gaimon, I began sketching. (I had already read an earlier version of the script whilst in New Zealand, way back when Miramax was still producing Peter’s movies. It was brilliant, by the way.) I did a few drawings, notably this one and a few others frankly too creepy to put on the site.
Then the project was sold to a big studio and went off to Hollywood. I opted not to be paid, and kept my sketches.
Shortly afterwards, Sophisticated Games in the UK called up to ask if I’d like to illustrate a Beowulf Boardgame. “Would I ever!” I replied, “When do we start? How many pictures do you want of what when? I’ve already got some material.” So I started sketching on Beowulf again. Now, board games often require that imagery be amputated, squeezed, inverted, silhouetted and otherwise manipulated and mistreated to fit within playing surfaces. To work in those constraints is often a bit of a heart-breaker, so I simply ignore what’s to become of it (at most, a sheet of tracing paper will tell me if the important elements in the image will fit the gaming surface) and do full illustrations. One of these was to be a view of Heorot. Well, thought I, here is the perfect opportunity to pick up that sketch, but I wished to show Grendel’s glof, even though Grendel himself would not be on the board, he would still be in the picture. Now the glof is a thing of hot debate amongst Anglo-Saxon philologists. No one is really sure where the word originates or what it means precisely. It is the bag/pouch/sack/receptacle into which Grendel stuffs Vikings and scraps of Viking he doesn’t wish to consume on the spot, to save them for later, more leisurely consumption on the moors or in his lair.
In the course of meandering through the net for Vendel and Beowulf imagery, I stumbled on an attractive rendering of said glof in a turn-of-the-century illustration. Then I stumbled on the illustration that THAT illustrator had used as inspiration, and there the trail stopped. My historically-inclined friends in Sweden, who know a sight more about Vikings and Vendels than I, coulnn’t tell me what it was, except they did point out possible Sami influence. So, I thought, why not swipe it myself? So, Grendel shucked off this ram’s hide and his Schieleian stance, shouldered his bag and squatted down off stage on a cliff overlooking Heorot, with a skull in hand ready to chuck over the stockade to taunt his enemies. (This time, the model was me, holding a plastic Hasbro Micro Machines Star Wars Death Star, since neither the library, local bookshop or my literary friend had any human skulls on hand.)
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Left: Grendel looking over Heorot
Centre: Initial colour wash
Right: “Final” art (In other words, finally abandoned.)
The picture started off happily enough, with one of those circumstantial seredipities of tone and colour. But, by the time I got as far as working up Heorot itself, I decided that the hall was all wrong, and that (on the advice of another Swedish friend; Swedes take Beowulf very much to heart) the main door would not be at the END of the hall, but in the MIDDLE. Already uncomfortable with the picture, and not wishing to draw any nearer than necessary to Edoras, (talk about reverse evolution) I dropped the picture then and there. Even the thought of rendering Grendel (and that most wonderful shape the intersection and overlapping of shoulder and triceps takes on when you pass your hand behind your back) wasn’t enough to keep me going ahead. Time constraints landed this Heorot on the Boardgame, but Grendel didn’t go away for long. My London agent, bless her, found an editor, and suddenly an illustrated edition of Beowulf was on the rails. I divided the subject in two, Heorot in one image, Grendel and his glof in another.
Quite a trip, all in all, from a script in Wellington to a book in London.
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Not all pictures go astray, thankfully. Occasionally, often enough to remain encouraging, or at least to maintain one’s illusions, a picture goes right…
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Left: Initial colour wash
Centre: Blocking in the landscape (The colours have not changed that radically, the first photo is “warmer” than the second, though I did cool the colours down a little while working up detail. Blame it on the photo and lighting.)
Right: Final art
JUST A REMINDER
I will be signing the FANTASY ART WORKSHOP (Yikes! That’s the day after tomorrow! Where’s my passport?) at Forbidden Planet in London on November 17th from 12:30 to 2:00 pm.
Store address and information:
Forbidden Planet Megastore
179 Shaftesbury Ave
London
WC2H 8JR
