Edgar Allen Poe - 'The Lake'

Open publication - Free publishing - More illustration

So for everyone who isn't coming to the Follow Me Maidstone Exhibition this week, this is my final book in digital form. I'll take a few pictures when I get it back from uni, because it looks a bit nicer as a concertina book than it does in digital form.

Artist's Statement:

Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, The Lake, describes a remembered place from his childhood, and his own connotations of death that he associated with it. Through an abstract narrative based on a similar location from my own childhood, I attempted to recreate the feelings and mood described in the poem. The location featured within my book is Embsay Reservoir and the surrounding moorland. Tweet

Obsession Project Work: Edgar Allen Poe - 'The Lake'

These were designed to illustrate Edgar Allen Poe's poem The Lake. The landscapes are based on the countryside in the Yorkshire Dales. Eventually some of these are going to be incorporated into a concertina book, but at the moment, they are quite initial and I will probably work them up to give a bit more contrast.
(They aren't really that red, that's my awful scanner.)
The Lake

In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less-
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody-
Then-ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight-
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define-
Nor Love-although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining-
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake.

THE END Tweet

Some Works in Progress

Now that my essay is more than the title I thought I'd upload some of the things I've been working on over the holidays for my Obsession project. The painting on the left was inspired by a poem by Edgar Allen Poe, I think. Apologies for the terrible phone photos.


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Obsession Project Work: Graves

So these are some initial drawings from the direction I'm hopefully going to take forward to my finals. The first set of graves are drawn from life in Maidstone Churchyard. I used an expensive looking carbon pencil for these, which gave strong blacks and didn't smudge much.
The second set were drawn without reference using a spongebrush and inks. The spongebrush was probably a bit too big for small scale drawings.


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Obsession project work: Collage

Some work from my current project. There are a few different strands going on here, but the first two pieces are based on the papparazzi harassment of Britney Spears and the last two are based on the noir Film the Maltese Falcon.




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