I'm back, and it's time for BOOK REPORTS
Hey there one and all. I'm back on livejournal after a couple years of the wild and reckless abandon of college life (translation: I had a lot of homework and wasted my free internet time reading webcomics instead of being a responsible blogger). And now, while I look for jobs and grad schools, and whether or not anyone actually wants to read this, I am going to post art and comics of my own here until the internet explodes. Yes! Right on!
For my first post back, I'm starting a series of Grown-up (ha. ha.) Book Reports wherein I illustrate characters and/or scenes from books/comics I'm currently reading. First one up - Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse.
All these pictures today are done in ink on Bristol, scanned, and clumsily photoshopped by yours truly.
First up is the Steppenwolf himself, Harry Haller. So far, my process has been to first jot down some quick sketches that rely mainly on my own memories and impressions of the characters after having finished whatever book. This way I'm hoping to keep my drawings lively because I'm starting by chasing down the essence rather than the detail. Then, I go back through the text to try to find both descriptions of the characters and any scenes that I might have thought of while I was drawing, and apply, you know, what the author actually wrote to my drawings. I also relied a lot here on fashion plates and photography from the late 1920s, when Steppenwolf was written, to get the clothing right (usually at the expense of the actual, you know, descriptions...whups -__-).
Here's a bit of the text from Hesse's own damn mouth:
“Though not very big, he had the bearing of a big man. He wore a fashionable and comfortable winter overcoat and he was well, though carelessly, dress, clean-shaven, and his cropped head showed here and there a streak of grey. He carried himself in a way I did not at all like at first. There was something weary and undecided about it that did not go with his keen striking profile nor with the tone of his voice.” (5)
“Above all, his face pleased me from the first, in spite of the foreign air it had. It was a rather original face and perhaps a sad one, but alert, thoughtful, strongly marked and highly intellectual.” (6)
“He gave at the very first glance the impression of a significant, an uncommon, and unusually gifted man. His face was intellectual, and the abnormally delicate and mobile play of his features reflected a soul of extremely emotional and unusually delicate sensibility.” (9)
And now, in color!
I've also done a double portrait of Harry Haller's companion-in-philosophy: Hermine and her drag king alter-ego Herman.
For Hermine: “Carried forward by the crowd, I soon found myself near the bar, wedged against a table at which sat a pale and pretty girl against the wall. She wore a thin dance-frock cut very low and a withered flower in her hair. She gave me a friendly and observant look as I came up and with a smile moved to one side to make room for me…While she wiped my glasses, I had the first clear impression of her pale, firm face, with its clear grey eyes and smooth forehead, and the short, tight curl in front of her ear.”(100)
Whups! I forgot the cleavage, sorry. But then! She is in disguise! :O Sexy disguise! What!
“On a high stool at the bar there was seated a pretty young fellow without a mask on and in evening dress who scrutinized me with a cursory and mocking glance…
She smiled, ‘Harry? Have you found me?’
It was Hermine, barely disguised by the make-up of her hair and a little paint. The stylish collar gave an unfamiliar look to the pallor of her intelligent face, and the wide black sleeves of her dress coat and the white cuffs made her hands look curiously small, and the long black trousers gave a curious elegance to her feet in their black and white silk socks.
‘Is this the costume, Hermine, in which you mean to make me fall in love with you?’
‘So far,’ she said, ‘I have contented myself with turning the heads of the ladies.” (189-190)
OH SNAP HERMANN HESSE
THAT
THAT IS REALLY QUITE SEXY
EDIT: Some references used:
Hermine's dress, Herman's suit, and Steppenwolf's suit (for the "stout man" lol ok 1929)
Anyway as a reward for reading through my blather, you get some treats! Send them off, Lynda Barry.
Right on right on!!
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