For today’s Sketch we’re back to Hans Christian Andersen with The Great Sea Serpent, one so obscure I hadn’t even heard of it until I started working on my list and I completely missed the point of the story the first time I read it.
Once I did get the point I really liked the concept of all the animals of the sea being unable to comprehend the alien (human) technology, and turn it into something it is not. (it just occurred to me that for someone as spiritual as Andersen usually is in his stories, this could ironically be considered an Atheist parable)
Still I really enjoyed doing this one with the only challenge was to keep the seaweed and algae from looking like fire in this medium.
I seem to be making up for pulling top ten stories like Snow White and Hansel and Gretel on the first week with stories stories so obscure I had to reread them before starting the sketch. Today’s story, The Clever Servant is a several of the Foolish Servant stories within the Grimm Brothers’ collection. (All of them come off as long form variations of the “My blank is so dumb” jokes) Most of the time they’re not quite as fun to do because they all seem to bail down into a single absurdist scene that don’t translate into a single static image as well as you’d think.
I think I centered the servant a little too much on this one in the process not giving the master and the cow as much room as they needed.
For day eight of my sketch Challenge the magic upper ware told me to draw one of the darker tales from the Brothers Grimm, The Juniper Tree! You usually don’t see the Juniper tree in anything but the unabridged editions. In fact I remember not reading it well into high school in Maurice Sendak’s collection, The Juniper Tree and Other Tales From Grimm. (The main thing I remember about it (besides all of the murder) is it’s the only one I know that has a good stepsister.
The problem of knowing it from a Maurice Sendak is thinking of an image that is nothing like one the master came up with.
Since most of the illustrations I know show a picture of the tree with the bird coming out of it. I decided to go with the bird’s perspective.
I seem to be drawing a whole lot of the popular fairy tales early in this challenge and today’s, Hansel & Gretel, is no exception.
I had the usual problem of choosing which scene to use but ending up going with what I consider the signature part of the story, the candy cake house… Of course with the line art and the scale I’m not sure just how clear it is that it’s made candy, but what can you do?
For today’s sketch we come to one of my old time favorite’s Frau Holle. I’ve always enjoyed the concept of Frau Holle, (loosely translated as Old Mother Frost) a sort of winter elemental spirit and a diminution of the pagan goddess, Holda.
It was hard to choose what to go with on this one. While obviously for me it’s all about Frau Holle, in the context of the story she’s almost a footnote, functioning as a kind of benevolent ogress. You almost get the feeling that there were several other stories about her floating around that the Grimms didn’t record but assumed that there readers would just take who Frau Holle was for granted, just as a modern children’s story wouldn’t need to explain Santa Claus or the Sandman.
Nevertheless, since I couldn’t think of good ways to show other parts of the story (such as the heroine shedding gold) I went with an image featuring the good Grandmother.
I decided to go with something lighter this week so I went with a few comedies on the theme of Holidays.
The film that had inspired this idea was Monsieur Hulot’ Holiday by Jacques Tati. I was familiar with Tati’s work from the Illusionist, which was based on one of his scripts, and Traffic the last of his Monsieur Hulot film which I only saw a bit of.
Tati plays Monsieur Hulot. Hulot, who has been described as a French Charlie Chaplain, Is a tall, clumsy and all around nice guy who is having a vacation on the beach. Plot white that’s about it with us getting to watch people staying at the resort going about their vacation with Hulot virtually existing in everyone’s peripheral vision going about mostly unnoticed accidentally and unintentionally causing chaos. (To a certain extent he kept reminding me of the Pink Panther)
This was an absolutely beautiful with all comic bits being beautifully composed. While it certainly is slapstick its difficult to call it that. It’s softer more lyrical pantomime.
I had heard that Rowan Atkinson‘s Mr. Bean had been mostly based on Hulo and that the second Bean Movie. Mr. Bean’s Holiday was a remake of Monsieur Hulot’ Holiday. I was just a little worried I’d be watching an English language version of what Id watched the night before.
Happily it was very much it’s own thing.
Mr. Bean wins a vacation in Cannes. Unfortunately he misses his train while in Paris which forces him to make his trek through France by any means necessary. In the mean time he helps a young boy find his parents and interferes with a prima donna of a director, played by Willem Dafoe in a brilliant self parody.
Much as I enjoy Atkinson’s work elsewhere and his physical comedy is magnificent I’m afraid I never really get into Mr. Bean. Still it was nicely done and very fun.
For today’s Sketch we’re back to Hans Christian Andersen with The Great Sea Serpent, one so obscure I hadn’t even heard of it until I started working on my list and I completely missed the point of the story the first time I read it.
