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 day five of the sketch challenge we go back to Mr. Andersen with the Princess and The Pea. This one was really easy frankly the only creative struggle you get when pulling this title from the magic Tupperware is choosing what angle you’re going to use for the ridiculously high stack of mattresses.
To be honest though, I don’t think that the Princess and the Pea is one of those stories that survives childhood very well. It’s just too silly. These day’s if I think about it at all it’s from Carol Burnett in Once Upon a Mattress.
Okay for today’s challenge I got one of the more obscure ones, though a classic example of one of the common motif of a magical elixir giving someone the ability to understand animals, with the White Snake.
Though there were plenty of options to go with this one I figured I had to go with something with the White Snake of the title. I think I was mostly cribbing the cover of the season one DVD for Hannibal when I did this.
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.
