vintage illustration Archives ⋆ Richard Parkin

vintage illustration

Misadventures in the Land of Fables #77

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Another fable inspired by an illustration. This time a watercolour, most likely from a Chinese natural history collection.

The first thing that struck me was the number of insects the spider had caught. What a haul! What a feast! I don’t know the quantities a spider needs to survive but this spread would seem a recipe for indigestion. The second thing was the contrast between the soft lines of the insects, the butterflies and dragonflies, and the angular joints of the spider, a black presence surrounded by colourful victims. A picture of an extravagant shindig with a predator as host.

“What’s for dinner tonight?” the damsel fly asked on its arrival.
“You are,” said the spider. “And the rest of you, stick around. Your turn will come.”

But this was more a tale of horror than a fable, and as a rule fables benefit from fewer protagonists; they work best as dialogues. And there was something I had forgotten in this scenario, the web. The web in the painting was only lightly traced, hinted at, de-emphasized in order to highlight the array of insects. A search for related images produced more impressive constructions.

So now we had the patterned beauty of the butterfly placed alongside the architecture of the spider’s web. The spider might, or might not, be considered ugly but its web can often be a thing of beauty. The fable developed from there.

You can read it here: ‘The Spider and the Butterfly’

Misadventures in the Land of Fables #75

ON ILLUSTRATING

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When I write a new version of an old fable I can usually find a vintage illustration or three to add some visual appeal to my commentary. For an original, it’s not so easy. I can source an image of the animal protagonist—there’s a tradition of highly aesthetic, scientific illustration to draw upon—or I could draw it myself.

You may have noted my illustration of the elephant defecating, or the man lying down to give his shadow a rest. I have tried again for the latest fable, ‘The Dung Beetle and the Snail,’ which you can read here. It’s a tale of misplaced confidence, or mistaken belief held so confidently the creature, a dung beetle, refuses to change its attitude despite the facts.

My first attempt at illustration (see below) tried to capture the size difference between snail shell and dung beetle that was a key element of the story, at least when I began to write. But the image didn’t work thematically. It adopts the beetles point of view and portrays it in an almost heroic confrontation with a force greater than itself, a mystery.

More appropriate would be the snail’s departure, but even that is only part of the story. The beetle needs to be there, reacting to this turn of events. Perhaps one day I’ll add him to the picture.

Drawing is one thing, illustration another: both are hard.

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