I Do Not Quite Despair Yet
Now that I'm talking about these pieces here on my blog I've noticed a trend is for me to change the intention of the original piece illustrated by the brothers Brock by eliminating a character. This often shifts the narrative in another direction, sometimes inwards. The elimination of a character also sometimes makes the piece unbalanced, here with the object of Catherine and Mrs. Allen's gaze being out of frame. I wanted that lack of balance. I wanted the viewer to feel the unease of Catherine as she desperately waits for the weather to clear so that she might get her longed for walk with Miss Tilney. Of course in the original piece, as happens in the story, it's the odious John Thorpe who enters and sweeps Catherine away and mortifies her in front of the Tilneys. John Thorpe needed to be eliminated in so many ways and omitting him from this piece brought me joy. But by rewinding the narrative until the moment before John Thorpe enters I have given Catherine hope, she does not quite despair... yet. As for the medium choices, a reproduction, no matter how good, doesn't quite do "I Do Not Quite Despair Yet" justice. The paper is a textured off-white that I have heavily varnished with Mod Podge to give it the slickness of the damnably interfering rain. I then did quick pen work over the top, trying to stay away from the precision of the original which I knew I didn't want to or couldn't achieve. An interesting note on this piece is that I totally forgot I made it. When I framed the other pieces in the series this escaped me and therefore it was a few years later that it was framed and joined the others in my library. It is very happy to have been reunited. Because it feels so good.
While Edmund implores Fanny to justify her rejection of the suitable offer of marriage from Henry Crawford of which he knows only the facts, the irony is that Edmund is basically asking Fanny to explain love and the workings of the heart, to which he has been a recent victim. Love is never about facts or how someone works on paper, it's all about the irrationality of our feelings. We just know. While Edmund speaks "Not of Facts, Perhaps, But of Feelings" it could just as easily be Fanny's reason as to why she rejected Henry. This scene is perhaps one of the most emotional for Fanny. She has spent days lost in a fug of her own thoughts and when Edmund approaches her it is at once exactly what she needs, yet from exactly the wrong quarter. How can she fully argue her case without showing Edmund that her heart belongs to him and can never belong to Henry. Of all the people she can confide in and they are talking at cross purposes! The irony of this scene is underscored by the irony of this piece ending up my favorite in the entire series. I say ironic because for a short while it actually had a new home in the trash. I was working with bulky oil pastels on a textured sepia paper and it wasn't turning out anything like I imagined. This piece was clumsy and frustrating and therefore I threw it in the trash. But thankfully, a sentiment issued by all in my class including my teacher, I took it out of the trash I just decided to throw everything at it. I used gesso to obscure what I didn't like, then I went in and actually used varnish on the oil pastels, pulling the color away from the forms and bleeding it into the background. After I was done my emotional frustration merged with Fanny's and I think this piece perfectly captures not just the characters frustrations but the fact that their minds are obscured to each other. They might walk side by side but they are so far apart. 
One of the best scenes in Pride and Prejudice is Lady Catherine de Bourgh's smack down of Lizzy that doesn't quite go to plan. She had intended for Lizzy to meekly agree to all her demands with regards to her nephew, therefore it is quite a shock when Lizzy doesn't play ball. Yes, Darcy's declaration of love might be the most loved, and the opening line the most quoted, but to me, NOTHING beats this scene. What Lady Catherine says flows off Lizzy like water off a duck's back and this makes her incensed, crying out "This is Not to be Bourne!" Lady Catherine can not believe her words are insignificant to Lizzy, yet they are, which lead to how I handled the treatment of this piece. I used the same paper stock as I did for my first piece in this series, "Every Savage Can Dance." Yet I reversed the treatment of the figures. In "Every Savage Can Dance" I used pencil over a ground of gesso. This lead to the figures popping out of the background and having definition with the line work on top. Here I didn't want the figures to pop. I wanted them kind of ghosted, to show that Lady Catherine's words will not impact Lizzy's decisions one bit. Therefore I laid down the pencil first and laid the gesso over it, obscuring the lines. Lady Catherine might think she has impact, but she has left no impression at all. While I admit that this piece might not be the most dramatic that I made in this series, I do think that it went exactly to plan with getting the meaning across. So shall I call it a success?
"It is Enough to Know They are Discovered" captures that moment when Lizzy and Jane finally learn that Lydia and Wickham have been found in London and, for that moment, "it is enough to know." Whatever else happens in the uncertain future must be tempered by the fact their location is no longer unknown in that vast and teaming metropolis. The original illustration by the brothers Brock includes Mr. Bennet as well, but I felt like he didn't fit. He added a domineering presence, at least in the illustration, and I thought that this was far more of an intimate moment between two sisters regarding their concern for their youngest sibling. Which is why I decided to render the image in watercolor. This is a medium that girls of the Regency period would have been familiar with, and though the Bennet sisters don't have any pretensions or inclinations in the direction of non-musical talents, they would be familiar with it nonetheless. As for the paper choice, I used paper that had flowers in it. The reason for this is twofold, one of the things that stuck me about Pride and Prejudice is the amount of time spent out of doors. Lizzy always has a healthy glow of exercise and exertion about her. But more importantly, they read this letter out in the little copse near there house. Most likely it's to keep away from the prying eyes of Mrs. Bennet, but I still feel that this intimate moment needs to be in the context of the vastness of nature. 
When I was working towards my BS in art at the UW-Madison I had an assignment to do a series of pieces, all the same size, that were interconnected. At the time I was heavily playing tabletop card games like Steve Jackson's Munchkin, so I envisioned the project as a set of playing cards that explained my personality. There was "A Vicious Feline of Extreme Loyalty" at plus three points that cancelled out my "Inability to Figure Out Your ID," existential angst being a college prerequisite. There was a good fairy balanced by a bad fairy, and physical traits like back problems and corrective vision. But it was my "Jane Austen/Darcy Obsession" at minus one point that captured my imagination. Is it any surprise? I was admittedly an addict. But I viewed it as a gentle and genteel addiction, hence it only encumbering me to a factor of minus one. Yet in creating this piece inspiration stuck and I had this need to continue on, to re-interpret famous Jane Austen illustrations in new mediums that captured the emotion behind the image. Jane Austen had sparked my sensibilities to create and create I must!
The Night World by Mordicai Gerstein
Between the Notes by Sharon Huss Roat
China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan
Bridget Jones's Diary (Bridget Jones Book 1) by Helen Fielding
Here's the cute illustration, love the banner of "No Emotional Fuckwittage."
Now here's what you see when you're reading... yes, it does look like a boob is starring at you. It's very off putting. Now I have nothing wrong with boobs, I have two of them. But do I want one starring at me while I'm trying to read? No thank you. Also, now my mom won't stop laughing after I showed her this as the definition of bad illustration placement...
