Illustration Notes for Episode Thirty

This week’s illustration was a challenge. The episode involves four people (five, if we count Jordan) sitting around a table talking—and a plate of pastry… I thought seriously about drawing the plate of pastry. Don’t think I didn’t. (Pastry has always held a certain fascination for me.) But I’d already drawn a plate of pastry in the illustration for Episode Twenty One (Yup. It’s there. Go look. ;] ) I just drew Jordan last week. I didn’t want to draw the first real portrait of Piper when she’s wearing a skirt and sweater. Such clothes are soooo not her. She’s only dressed that way in this scene because she thinks she’s in really big trouble. This scene’s not really about Rain, particularly… The most interesting person at this conversation is really The Lady. And we haven’t seen her (up close anyway) since the Prologue.

So, The Lady, it was.

But depicting The Lady is a tall order, especially in this scene. The Lady is a VERY old, VERY powerful and talented woman, easily able to appear in any way, as anything, she wishes to—as demonstrated in this episode. On this occasion, she wants Matthew to see someone he’ll like, trust, and want to please—a LOT. So she ‘projects’ a beautiful, yet, somewhat maternal—powerful, yet welcoming and compassionate—older, yet not old—regal, yet approachable woman in a dress full of stars. We see how effective The Lady’s projection is as Matt finds himself—after days of wanting to find this woman and make her change him back—just apologizing instead for causing so much trouble. All of this is the sort of trick only a queen of fairy can really pull off convincingly. …And I’m not the queen of fairy.

Still, I had to try, so I dispensed with intimidating crowns and royal regalia, made her look as beautiful as I could, but gave her just enough facial sculpture, lines around eyes and mouth—even a hint of jowls—to throw the feel of ‘youth’ off a little, tried for an expression both ‘formidable’ and ‘kind and concerned,’ and put her in a dress full of stars, which was the easiest part for sure. Her hair is supposed to be “white silver,” but, unfortunately, the warm ‘sepia tone’ in which I’ve decided to do all of the ‘Matt’s Tale’ illustrations makes her hair look blond. I tried a bunch of things to fix this, but found none that didn’t just make her hair look more ‘strange’ than white. So…please just imagine that I got it right somehow. :]

Oh—I also gave her a slight gauzy ‘glow.’ That glow didn’t actually exist in the scene as written, but ‘The Lady’ Matt is meeting here is, in a number of ways, a hallucinogenic vision, (more about that in coming episodes), so I decided to indicate that too with a gauzy ‘aura’ of ‘glamour’ around her.

So…I’m clearly still nowhere near as good at this as the queen of fairy is, but the uncropped, uncluttered version is available below for your consideration anyway. :]