It didn’t help that I was distracted by ongoing tech support emails, but today’s rhyme There was a lady skin and bone, was a pain!
While I’m finding it useful to include the poems with the sketch, when there’s more than three verses it screws with the spacing of the image. To make matters worse it was hard to choose what part of the poem to use. The obvious bit is when she sees the dead man but even there… Yes I know this is supposed to be a story about our inevitable mortality, but what kind of people leave a body to rot in the middle of a public area… Not to mention the parson comes off as a real jerk!
Today’s rhyme, If you find a Hairpin, was one of those gems where you know what you’re going to put onto paper within five seconds of looking at it.
Regrettably in my confidence I had a nice relaxed breakfast and dragged my feet a bit before actually doing it. but after that the execution was really smooth with the only stumbling point being deciding exactly what flavor of cute high school student I would go with.
Also the political correct side of me feels just a little guilty drawing the most offensive nerdy stereotype I could think of to make this work.
Well with Jack and Gill I came to the second one in this sketch challenge that I had heard of, and with this being on the top ten list of most generic nursery rhymes I was not looking forward to it… Then I read the next two verses.
Well this week I ended up doing films about hitmen.
The first on my list was John Woo‘s classic, The Killer starring Chow Yun-fat. Chow plays the titular killer who during his latest hit is responsible for the blinding a beautiful singer. His guilt draws him closer to her and wanting to leave the business. But while doing one last job he’s seen and the Triad boss wants him dead.
But as he is hunted by the Triad he is also hunted by the police with the lead Detective played by Danny Lee and the chaos of the hunt brings the two together first as antagonists and then as allies.
This film is a hyperkinetic romp of ultaviolence with multiple gunfights but at the same time strangely lyrical and a lot of woo’s signature style starts here, things like the doves and point blank standoffs. While these can almost feel silly after a while it’s all well done fun.
Woo was inspired quite a bit by Jean-Pierre Melville‘s Le Samouraï so I thought this would be a good second film. At first glance the plot is very similar, with a single hitman doing his job, a hit at a night club and his employers want him dead, but from there the similarity ends.
Where The Killer is a fast paced, Le Samouraï is slow paced and methodical as the hetman plans his alibi which after he commits the hit is airtight despite the police’s best efforts. The ensuing cat and mouse game is almost a meditation.
I won’t say this illustration of poem #7 in The Annotated Mother Goose, “When I was a little boy”, is another dud, but it did not inspire at all.
The only things I can say about it, beyond filling in the basic specs of the rhyme, is since I know nothing about childhood in historical England (beyond it being an invention of the Victorians) this is the first sketch where I didn’t even try to keep in period.
Also I threw in the mouse as a desperate attempt to keep things interesting.
