Thursday 30 April 2009

Alice in Wonderland: The Caterpillar

This was so much fun to do. Essentially it's just a massive drugged up fat, fleshy mass on a mushroom. I'd like to go on about how it's so much more than that. But it's not.


Interesting Fact: The face of the caterpillar is based on Johnny Vegas. Except without a nose. The character 'Moz' he plays in the sitcom 'Ideal' summed up my representation of the caterpillar in the story perfectly.

Wednesday 29 April 2009

Alice in Wonderland

My coursework project for A2 Art and Design: Fine Art was based on Narrative Art, and telling stories visually. This ended up with me studying and illustrating my own representation of Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland.


This was a drawing from a previous illustration - I cannot remember who did it. It took ages.

My own Alice eventually ended up becoming a bit of a lolita. After reading about all of the stories of Lewis Caroll possibly having a bit of a dodgy relationship with a real life Alice, I decided to switch her role. And make her more sexualised. The reason for this sexualisation probably came to my mind when researching the story of Alice itself. I was working my way through the various film representations of Alice, and when I got to 'Alice in Wonderland (1976)' it came to my attention after watching it for a few minutes, that this version was in fact an adult version. And not just any adult version, it was also a musical - making the extended title: 'Alice in Wonderland: A Musical Porno'. If you ever get a chance to watch this, do, looking back it's really quite hilarious, I suppose, once you get over the horror of Tweedledee and Tweedledum bursting into song then proceeding to take part in a 69.

But anyway, Alice basically just ended up becoming a classic 1950's pin up girl which have always been such an obsession of mine. She is a mish-mash of (quite obviously) Marylin Monroe, standing on the grate in 'The Seven Year Itch', and Gil Elvgren's coy yet more-than-meets-the-eye girls who always end up exposed whilst doing their womanly chores, for example somehow managing to get their broom handle stuck up their skirt in such a way that reveals the very top of their stockings, or sometimes, if we're lucky, their drawers.


I just love their expressions, the 'Oh no, my knickers are completely on show, I'm so embarassed, but don't stop looking, as I secretly like it. ' And the notion that back then, the only way you could see a girl's underwear was by some freak archery accident. Still so much is left to the imagination yet it's still so sexy. This is worlds sexier than any page 3 Sun tart. There's so much more charm. So much more personality. Exactly how I wanted my Alice in Wonderland to be.