Like most people who draw, I love seeing how my work has improved over time, and how the characters I draw change.
(There's a PDF with the free printables at the bottom of this post, for which you will need decent card, scissors, and possibly a responsible person to keep an eye on said scissors. I just want you to read all my tales first.)
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| Free bookmarks! Wahey! |
When I was in the last year of my undergraduate course, around 2014-2015 (Illustration BA, University of Gloucestershire) we all had to set ourselves a final major project. Some people did children’s books, some did zines, I think there might’ve been animation going on somewhere, and I did a graphic novel about Shaw’s Academy. I wrote it all, and inked most of the final pages, but I never got round to finishing it, which I suppose is a good thing. It was badly researched, and all the anatomy was out of whack, and, although I loved it at the time, and it’s a fair achievement to attempt a whole damned graphic novel, it was generally a bit dreadful.
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| The huge folder that contains all the drawings for my graphic novel, each on its own sheet of Bristol board, sometimes with redrawn versions and extra bits. The printed version is much thinner - about 7mm on decent cartridge paper. |
Let’s think about the research bit. Yes, I went to archives of my own volition - a bit unusual for an Illustration undergrad - and tracked down all sorts of stuff, but I had a storyline that I wanted to fit it to. If something didn’t fit, I’d ignore it. If something was almost provably false, but it fit the story, in it went. I didn’t give much consideration to it, to be honest.
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| Notes I took on my first ever trip to an archive! |
Now, I still need to go to archives - unfortunately, due to Current Circumstances, things are a bit difficult on that front - and I’ve got a big list of documents and stuff I need to get my hands on. I’m also using a broader range of sources; circa 2014, if something did not directly and explicitly relate to the Academy, I wouldn’t be much interested, but using a wider range of stuff enables you to try filling in gaps and pull in exciting new influences and what-have-you. As for inconveniences and stuff that doesn’t fit - they can provoke fruitier narratives - more high drama - or they can be left out, but they’ve got to be acknowledged and it's best to explain why you aren’t using them.
Anyway, the book was about a fictitious boy who goes to Shaw’s Academy and experiences an assortment of horrors. It was designed to provoke alarm in the viewer. (And now provokes alarm in me when I consider how bad it was…) But, in the story, there’s a blend of fictional characters and ‘real’ characters, or characters based on real people.
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| Original inked version on the left. What the finals would have looked like (following digital processing and colouring) on the right. I only completely finished about twelve pages or something like that. |
(This could get a bit tangled on the historiographical side. It could be argued that historians’ representations of the people in their case studies at least partly fictionalised anyway - the historian communicates a narrative containing their subjective understanding of events that happened and the people involved… Probably ought to save that for the thesis.)
Of course, William Shaw was in there, and so were Bridget Shaw and Charles Mackay. And I love seeing how much my drawings and interpretations of them have changed.
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| 2014 William vs 2020 William (who is evidently pre-ophthalmia because he's still got both eyes). |
I’ve tied William’s design a lot closer to the description of him provided by Horatio Lloyd, and Phiz’s depiction of Wackford Squeers. (This post explains more!)
In the graphic novel, William was portrayed as being mostly sympathetic towards the boys but, as the narrative went on and more unpleasant things happened, he became somewhat more disagreeable and dangerous. There was no exploration of his personal life, and all the associated dramas there, which I'm now taking a much more active interest in, to the point where my work looks set to be the most in-depth study of William and his world... By, that might sound a bit grand.
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| Charley is afflicted with a bad case of resting bitch face. He’s alright really. Probably. |
Charley has changed a lot - in the story I wrote in 2014, he was very grumpy, and didn’t really do much apart from dish out punishments and terrify people. That version of him doesn’t fit with my understanding of how he wanted to be perceived - in his advert in the Times in July 1815, when he ran his own school for a couple of years, he states that he wants to protect the kids who were sent to him as though they were his own. But I still want him to look scary, even if he doesn’t act like it - that’s part of my interrogation of the professional and personal relationship between him and his employer William.
(This post could into a list of things I've got to write about. Perhaps I'll stick William + Charley + power in the thesis. Lotsa good drawings and such there.)
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| Bridget looks much happier now. |
Bridget Shaw didn’t appear much in the graphic novel. When she did, she was only vaguely bothered about the boys’ welfare, but not too much - which contrasts with accounts of her behaviour that I later found, how concerned she was during the ophthalmia epidemic, how alarmed she was when one of the boys became ill suddenly, and an interesting rumour of how she interrupted beatings.
Physically, my characterisation of her in 2014 was based on Mrs. Squeers, who I (at the time) thought must’ve been based on Bridget, but I don’t think that Dickens and Phiz ever saw her - so I’ve got free reign to design her as I see fit. (And, of course, I’d encourage anybody else to draw her according to their interpretation!) Now I want her to be a physical contrast to her husband, so while he’s skinny and sharp and somewhat restrained in his movements, Bridget is rather more substantially built (which, historiographically, is funny because there isn't much substantial evidence about her compared to her husband) and prone to effervescent mannerisms.
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| Here's Ann with one of my latest sketches of her. |
So there they are - and I had so much fun making the new drawings, that I had to include Ann Mackay, who never appeared in my graphic novel, so I didn’t have to consider my previous interpretations when I started drawing her for my PhD project - because I didn't have any! (Which, in hindsight, is a bit silly, but then my attitudes towards research at that time were a bit silly anyway. It's good to learn stuff and get better at things.)
I'll do a post about Ann and Charley, and the influences and stuff I used to draw them.
Right - bookmarks! Free stuff! The PDF contains two sheets: one black-and-white (that you can colour according to your own inclinations, if you like) and one with the colours that I usually use for these characters.
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| This book is amazing and one day I will do a post in which I review it/ scream about how good it is/ make a lot of noise about the astonishing things it contains. It definitely contains William. |
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| This is what's in the PDF! |
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| I ended up going for a blue-ish theme when I coloured my black-and-white ones. Poor William looks like a ghost. Bridget's dress though. 👍 |
Here's the PDF. Print it out on decent A4 card, and get a responsible person to help with cutting them out. And show me if you do anything with them!
