As promised in my previous post, I’ve completed a “making of” video of the final large illustration for my BLEAK HOUSE project. It’s not the last chronologically in the book, just the last one to get to. In fact there are two more small, or “spot” illustrations still to do, and those I can do in a few days or a week at most.
The larger ones take more time to work out a more elaborate composition, and can take a month. Shooting a video while doing this work adds a great deal to to process, and of course cutting and editing a video can be time consuming, but I hope the results are worth your time.
The scene is of the parlor of the Smallweed family, a secondary group of characters in a book with a cast of over fifty populating its pages. Like all Dickens characters, they are as vivid as can be, and of course that clarity is what inspired me in the first place.
Dickens describes them:
There has been only one child in the Smallweed family for several generations. Little old men and women there have been, but no child, until Mr. Smallweed’s grandmother, now living, became weak in her intellect and fell (for the first time) into a childish state. With such infantine graces as a total want of observation, memory, understanding, and interest, and an eternal disposition to fall asleep over the fire and into it, Mr. Smallweed’s grandmother has undoubtedly brightened the family.
Mr. Smallweed’s grandfather is likewise of the party. He is in a helpless condition as to his lower, and nearly so as to his upper, limbs, but his mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it ever held, the first four rules of arithmetic and a certain small collection of the hardest facts. In respect of ideality, reverence, wonder, and other such phrenological attributes, it is no worse off than it used to be. Everything that Mr. Smallweed’s grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life he has never bred a single butterfly.
…..Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born to it and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something depressing on their minds.
BLEAK HOUSE, Chapter 21
I’ve been deliberately analog with this project, avoiding virtually all digital tools and media other that using my iPad for photo research, and scanning my sketches. My computer skills are fine, and were truly cutting edge ten years ago, but you know how that goes. Back in the early 2000’s a friend of mine would tell me about the degree in computer science he earned back in 1980, and we would both laugh! Not only do computer skills get stale at a blinding pace, but I genuinely missed buying, handling and using actual art supplies.
In the video, I start with the roughest thumbnail sketches and attempt to show every step of the process of linoleum cutting and printing. My first draft came in at 45 minutes and even I found it boring. I originally cut it down to 17 minutes and was pretty happy with it. I then shared it with the folks at The Dickens Society, and they were so impressed that they said if I could cut it down to under ten minutes, they would post it on their YouTube channel.
Well it’s amazing what a little incentive will do, so below is the final cut, coming in at just under eight minutes.
Thanks for taking the time to visit and watch! You can drop me a line at dickens@mooneyart.com . This isn’t the last post in the blog by a long shot so I hope you will come back again to see more!
Gerry Mooney Illustrating Dickens 