Tuesday 19 February 2013

Discovering New Life

Cleaning out my workspace today, I found these:

After some basic calculations, based on the age of the other sketches and doodles that were in the vicinity, I realized that I must have done these about two years ago. It was an odd sensation. Odd, because I had no recollection of ever doing them at all. I don't really recall what I was thinking or what the thought was behind these. But yet, there they were, among many other doodles that I could explain the origin of quite happily. The experience (I imagine) was not so different from doing an archaeological dig and coming up with the fossil of an entirely new species.

So, in keeping with the analogy, I have put on my biologist's hat and have given these poor unrecognized creatures a history:

Sunday 17 February 2013

Blind Date

My original thought for this doodle was along the lines of Red Riding Hood. But when the dragon character was done, I looked at him and found that, in spite of the toothy leer and eating utensils in his pocket, I felt rather sorry for him.

His coat might be pinstriped, but the poor creature either cannot afford a pair of pants or doesn't have friends who can tell him that going on a blind date commando-style is just not in. And while he's leaning rather intensely into his date, it may be a result of near-sightedness rather than a lack of respect for personal space. All in all, a pitiful creature and, I felt, much deserving of a blog post at the very least.

Friday 1 February 2013

Eponine

© Diane Davenport
"Come! Here he is!"

He raised his eyes, and recognized that wretched child who had come to him one morning, the elder of the Thenardier daughters, Eponine; he knew her name now. Strange to say, she had grown poorer and prettier, two steps which it had not seemed within her power to take. She had accomplished a double progress, towards the light and towards distress. She was barefooted and in rags, as on the day when she had so resolutely entered his chamber, only her rags were two months older now, the holes were larger, the tatters more sordid. It was the same harsh voice, the same brow dimmed and wrinkled with tan, the same free, wild, and vacillating glance. She had besides, more than formerly, in her face that indescribably terrified and lamentable something which sojourn in a prison adds to wretchedness.

She had bits of straw and hay in her hair, not like Ophelia through having gone mad from the contagion of Hamlet's madness, but because she had slept in the loft of some stable.

And in spite of all, she was beautiful. What a star art thou, O youth!

(Les Misérables Victor Hugo)