Thursday 27 October 2011

'Trilby' and 'Rosalind & Celia'.

First personal images for a while...

Trilby O'Ferrall after George du Maurier's depiction of her in his own novel: 'Trilby', featuring the hypnotist Svengali. Also inspired by images of Dorothy Baird as Trilby. (Trilby gave her name to the hat!)

Du Maurier describes her very specifically, including the huge slippers(!), and drew her himself as he was a well known cartoonist of his time:

"It was the figure of a very tall and fully-developed young female,
clad in the gray overcoat of a French infantry soldier, continued
netherwards by a short striped petticoat, beneath which were visible
her bare white ankles and insteps, and slim, straight, rosy heels,
clean cut and smooth as the back of a razor; her toes lost themselves
in a huge pair of male slippers, which made her drag her feet as she
walked."

For those interested in the process, it's all painted in Photoshop CS2, with a few textures used partly for some of the grain on the wood and to 'distress' the coat a fraction.


And another personal piece, indulging my obsession with Elizabethan clothing: 'Tudorpunk'! An interpretation of Rosalind and Celia, from 'As You Like It', by William Shakespeare. (That's WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, not Edward de Vere). Also a close-up of their faces.

I did not then entreat to have her stay;
It was your pleasure, and your own remorse;
I was too young that time to value her,
But now I know her. If she be a traitor,
Why so am I: we still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together;
And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable.