Redrawing Pages: More Celephais
on November 11, 2011
at 11:13 pm
Who’s redrawing still more of Celephais? Me! Here’s another panel from the upcoming book edition.
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I’m not David Macaulay level, but I love drawing architectural details. This sketch shows some buildings in Celephais, which I had just drawn in Dream-Quest and Celephais. The architecture of Celephais, in my comics, is based on several influences: (1) Winsor McCay’s “Little Nemo in Slumberland” and the gigantic, towering Edwardian World’s Fair architecture which inspired him; (2) European castles; and (3) Arabic architecture. Classical Arabic and Middle Eastern architecture has some incredible shapes and symmetries, and it’s very much in the spirit of the Arabian-Nights-esque story “Celephais”; the only way Western Medieval cities really beat out Arabian ones is statuary, of course, due to the Islamic anti-statues influence. So my vision of Celephais, this playground city of childhood fantasies, is essentially Ancient Arabic architecture + Neo-Classical Western statuary.
Looking back on my design of Celephais in the graphic novel, I sort of wish I’d de-emphasized the ‘children’s playground’/Little Nemo element, as well as the pompous World’s Fair architecture, and gone for more of a purely Arabian exotic fantasy look (plus the statues). The city as I drew it is kind of a jumble of influences: appropriate for a dream, maybe, but messier than I’d have liked. But when I first read “Celephais” I didn’t pick up on the Arabian-Nights Orientalist influence as much, and I envisioned it as more of a European fantasy city — knights and so on. In fact, it was Chaosium author Kevin A. Ross who looked at my sketches at NecronomiCON years ago and asked me why there wasn’t more Arabian influence, and I modified it going forward based on his advice. Anyway, I’m happy with how it turned out, but I wish I’d made it more of an appealing place to live rather than just visit. The Sunset City has its little lanes with grassy cobbles, its narrow hill streets, but Celephais as I drew it seems to be all grand squares and tall public buildings: it has no quiet small back lanes, no little houses to sleep in after a long day. The city must have these quiet places, though, so maybe I just need to draw them.
Interested in some art? Commission a sketch! Also: come back tomorrow for the first page of… THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH!
Another detail drawing of Lovecraft’s Celephais. Like I mentioned in a previous post, my Celephais is basically a fusion of fantastical Middle-Ages European and Arabian architecture, seen through the rose-colored glasses of childhood. Since it is a sister city to Serannian, of course there are buildings in the clouds — although I wish I’d left them out of this sketch, because having them hanging there in the sky as real and dark-lined as everything, like in “Inception,” seems to shut out the sky and give everything a kind of claustrophobic look. This drawing would also have been better if I’d drawn some human figures in the foreground, to give everything a better sense of scale, instead of just some ant-like figures on the promenades in the distance.
Today I’m working on “Sarnath” and my other Lovecraft project, Mystery Lovecraft Project X. Also, it’s Friday, so go read today’s King of RPGs! King of RPGs volumes 1 and 2 (which are separate material from the webcomic, drawn by my friend Victor Hao) are now available on iTunes and Nook as well, so you don’t have to go digging in the ruins of a Borders to find one. If you’re at all gamey (gamest? gamer-esque?), check it out!