Go Draw Alice
Inktober may be over, but I think I am now harboring an addiction.
It was a fun project, and I do believe it helped me advance my drawing skills ( I will post my final few drawings and a pdf of the collection here in a couple of days), but I should have known that falling into a routine and maintaining it for 31 days, there would be a habit to either break or enable. As I sat down to catch a little TV last night, the first day of November, I almost instinctively picked up my drawing board. All the ink I’d been spreading reminded me of pictures of one of my favorite literary characters, so in homage to misters Tenniel and Dodson, here are a couple of studies from the Mad Tea Party.
Barb looked at it and said, “Alice looks pissed.” My Alice doesn’t look exactly like Tenniel’s but indeed she is pissed in the original as well. For good reason. The Hatter and his companions are quite rude to her:
The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: “No room! No room!” they cried out when they saw Alice coming. “There’s plenty of room!” said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.
“Have some wine,” the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. “I don’t see any wine,” she remarked.
“There isn’t any,” said the March Hare.
“Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it,” said Alice angrily.
“It wasn’t very civil of you to sit down without being invited,” said the March Hare.
“I didn’t know it was your table,” said Alice; “it’s laid for a great many more than three.”
“Your hair wants cutting,” said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.
“You should learn not to make personal remarks,” Alice said with some severity; “it’s very rude.”
She was angry because they were mad. Indeed, to quote from elsewhere in the book, “We’re all mad here.” A little bit of madness is to be expected. Tolerated, even. In some cases, encouraged.
As far as addictions go, drawing is a habit I probably don’t want to break.
Sketch on.