The Gawain Project: a history and an introduction
Sunday, 16 November 2008 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
siguneYou don't want to know how many drafts of this post I have on my mini-laptop. I discovered that I was fated to make this thing too long and too full of needless deviations, no matter how often I started over. That is the reason why I am only now introducing a project with which I have been toying since August.
If you are one of five people keeping an eye on my other Sleeper’s Den on Blogspot, you already know that I have once more entered an Arthurian phase. I really have no idea what triggered it; it’s not as though my professional activities are in any way conducive to fantasising about knights -- or maybe they actually are, by virtue of being very prosaic and pushing all my crazy creative imagination in one direction. In any case, I suddenly got it into my head to draw (short -- that is, non-epic-scale) comics about my very favourite among all knights of the Round Table, the amazing Sir Gawain.
You will say that I am just very fickle and start up heaps of projects that I never finish. That is indeed how it looks, but it does not mean that I never *will* finish anything. It’s part of how my creative brain works. When I have to invent and shape things myself, I need a very, very long preparation period. Then I need another very long time to let everything I have learnt simmer and gestate. It is only when my ideas are fully formed and mature that I experience gushing bouts of creativity, during which I am (often frantically) productive. In other words, I can only create as soon as everything is in place and I know the stories -- and the souls -- of all the players. Of course things may still develop further while I am writing/drawing, but the important thing is that there are no longer any large holes in the fabric of my imagination when I start on the creative part of the work, because if there are, I am bound to get stuck.
The result is, of course, that I produce little and late. Keep an eye on me, because if I am destined to produce a masterpiece one day, it will certainly be when I am around seventy or something :P. If there is one thing I have never been, it is a prodigy. My brain runs on diesel. The advantage is that I don’t run the risk of burning out any time soon ;-).
So: my Gawain Project. It has pushed my Gauls aside for the moment because my Gauls -- well, they aren’t ripe yet. Too many holes. I have made a lot of progress with them, but it is really too early to start writing. The thing is also that the drawing of comics is too labour-intensive to do just drafts of a story -- I can’t draw without a clear plan, and I must avoid to work on pages that will be thrown away. It’s not like creating a text. (Oh, how often I have wished I could just write instead of feeling the need to draw those blasted comics! But I can’t… Prose and comics work differently, and these are stories that simply *demand* to be drawn.)
My story with Gawain is ages old. It predates my fascination with the Gauls, so it’s only fair that I should give it priority now ;-). The first sustained prose effort that I ever finished was a Sir Gawain/Lord of the Rings crossover, when I was fourteen. If the Pit of Voles had existed then, you would have found my story there, complete with its shiny Mary Sue :D. A year later, I had finished the first part of a really serious Gawain Trilogy, without Mary Sue. The manuscript was written with a calligraphy pen in a blank booklet, and illuminated with Celtic motifs at the beginning of every “book”. Despite that, it was rejected by two publishing houses ;P.
I have LOTS of Arthurian drawings. In fact, it was while attempting to draw scenes from my Arthurian fancy that I started to work on getting to draw properly, mainly by copying from early twentieth-century illustrators of children’s books like Arthur Rackham and Warwick Goble (my two favourites -- the prettiest volumes of my Arthurian library are two facsimiles of early twentieth-century, Malory-based Round Table books with Rackham’s illustrations). So in a way you could say that King Arthur and his knights were at the basis of the development of my consciously creative imagination and activities. All my Arthurian efforts were, however, very immature. It has been a strange experience to find, during the past two weeks, that at the back of my head, Arthur and his knights have been merrily developing, and in the blink of an eye they were able to pop up again, large as life. Rex quondam rexque futurus, eh ;P?
As for Gawain, I’m not sure I can explain what drew me to him, precisely, and not to any other of the “Noble Knights”. Until I was thirteen or fourteen, I was always drawn to perfect, invincible heroes like Lancelot. Admittedly, Lancelot isn’t flawless either, because of his affair with Queen Guinevere, but in the children’s versions of the legend that I read, there was no such thing as an affair. He simply adored her from afar and managed the most amazing feats for nothing more than a smile ;-). But at one point I became bored with the Lancelots of this world, who, apart from their weakness for another man’s wife, never seemed to become human at any point. Lancelot didn’t get angry, or jealous, or evil; he never lacked in mercy, was never rude or sharp, let alone witty; and he never lost a fight. In short, he was dull. Not so with Gawain.
Gawain is, as I have recently read somewhere, elastic. In several medieval romances, he is Arthur’s noblest knight. When Lancelot is around, he is often ‘second only to Lancelot’ (a bit of a pathetic place to be in). In Grail stories, he either plays a very special, prominent role parallel to Percival’s, or he is a complete failure and nearly gets killed by Galahad. In Malory, he is powerful, but nevertheless superseded by several other knights, among whom his youngest brother Gareth. That is because in the Morte Darthur he is essentially weak as a personality -- fickle, shallow, sometimes violent, and on the whole not very likeable. In other texts too, Gawain gets into a fury from time to time (funny enough, one thing that particularly angers him is violence against animals), disobeys his king when he feels like it, and none of Arthur’s knights get into stranger situations than he. People are always forcing him into bed with their wives or daughters, waiting to see whether he’ll touch them or not (it is up to him to figure out which option is expected of him). Most knights who go questing for the Grail find, if anything, a cup and a bleeding spear, but Gawain’s quest is successful when he ends up the lord of a castle full of women and finds himself (yet) a(nother) wife. If Lancelot gets married at all, it is because he has been deceived into sleeping with a woman who passed herself off as Guinevere; Galahad is most definitely not his lovechild. Gawain, on the other hand, has countless lovers and seems to be equally enthusiastic about all of them. He gets married all the time, and more than once meets a handsome stranger who turns out to be his son by some past conquest. And for some reason, people insist on trying to chop off his head, or insist that he chop off theirs.
One thing that is the same in all stories is the deep affection Gawain and King Arthur have for each other. As Arthur’s eldest nephew, Gawain is often his successor, especially as in most stories, Arthur does not have a legitimate son to be his heir. Gawain is the only knight to whom Arthur lends Excalibur. He often functions as counsellor, and as a character who must bring strange phenomena under his uncle’s rule.
Gawain first arrives in Camelot as a very young man, to join the celebration of Arthur’s marriage to Guinevere. He is knighted, and at the behest of Merlin sent at once on a quest, together with his second brother Gaheris. The quest is a disaster: Gawain makes the worst possible knightly début ever. He vanquishes all his opponents, but ends up killing a woman. As his punishment, Queen Guinevere orders him to become the champion of all women. Gawain is supposed to take up the cause of any woman who asks for his assistance -- so sometimes you’ll see him fighting in defence of someone who is very simply in the wrong. He isn’t allowed to say no :D.
The working title of my current Gawain Project is The Ladies' Knight. That is one of Gawain's 'official' titles (another one is the Knight with the Golden Tongue), and obviously the aspect of him that interests me most *g*. I will be introducing the main characters and showing pictures in coming posts. I hope you enjoy them :-).
If you are one of five people keeping an eye on my other Sleeper’s Den on Blogspot, you already know that I have once more entered an Arthurian phase. I really have no idea what triggered it; it’s not as though my professional activities are in any way conducive to fantasising about knights -- or maybe they actually are, by virtue of being very prosaic and pushing all my crazy creative imagination in one direction. In any case, I suddenly got it into my head to draw (short -- that is, non-epic-scale) comics about my very favourite among all knights of the Round Table, the amazing Sir Gawain.
You will say that I am just very fickle and start up heaps of projects that I never finish. That is indeed how it looks, but it does not mean that I never *will* finish anything. It’s part of how my creative brain works. When I have to invent and shape things myself, I need a very, very long preparation period. Then I need another very long time to let everything I have learnt simmer and gestate. It is only when my ideas are fully formed and mature that I experience gushing bouts of creativity, during which I am (often frantically) productive. In other words, I can only create as soon as everything is in place and I know the stories -- and the souls -- of all the players. Of course things may still develop further while I am writing/drawing, but the important thing is that there are no longer any large holes in the fabric of my imagination when I start on the creative part of the work, because if there are, I am bound to get stuck.
The result is, of course, that I produce little and late. Keep an eye on me, because if I am destined to produce a masterpiece one day, it will certainly be when I am around seventy or something :P. If there is one thing I have never been, it is a prodigy. My brain runs on diesel. The advantage is that I don’t run the risk of burning out any time soon ;-).
So: my Gawain Project. It has pushed my Gauls aside for the moment because my Gauls -- well, they aren’t ripe yet. Too many holes. I have made a lot of progress with them, but it is really too early to start writing. The thing is also that the drawing of comics is too labour-intensive to do just drafts of a story -- I can’t draw without a clear plan, and I must avoid to work on pages that will be thrown away. It’s not like creating a text. (Oh, how often I have wished I could just write instead of feeling the need to draw those blasted comics! But I can’t… Prose and comics work differently, and these are stories that simply *demand* to be drawn.)
My story with Gawain is ages old. It predates my fascination with the Gauls, so it’s only fair that I should give it priority now ;-). The first sustained prose effort that I ever finished was a Sir Gawain/Lord of the Rings crossover, when I was fourteen. If the Pit of Voles had existed then, you would have found my story there, complete with its shiny Mary Sue :D. A year later, I had finished the first part of a really serious Gawain Trilogy, without Mary Sue. The manuscript was written with a calligraphy pen in a blank booklet, and illuminated with Celtic motifs at the beginning of every “book”. Despite that, it was rejected by two publishing houses ;P.
I have LOTS of Arthurian drawings. In fact, it was while attempting to draw scenes from my Arthurian fancy that I started to work on getting to draw properly, mainly by copying from early twentieth-century illustrators of children’s books like Arthur Rackham and Warwick Goble (my two favourites -- the prettiest volumes of my Arthurian library are two facsimiles of early twentieth-century, Malory-based Round Table books with Rackham’s illustrations). So in a way you could say that King Arthur and his knights were at the basis of the development of my consciously creative imagination and activities. All my Arthurian efforts were, however, very immature. It has been a strange experience to find, during the past two weeks, that at the back of my head, Arthur and his knights have been merrily developing, and in the blink of an eye they were able to pop up again, large as life. Rex quondam rexque futurus, eh ;P?
As for Gawain, I’m not sure I can explain what drew me to him, precisely, and not to any other of the “Noble Knights”. Until I was thirteen or fourteen, I was always drawn to perfect, invincible heroes like Lancelot. Admittedly, Lancelot isn’t flawless either, because of his affair with Queen Guinevere, but in the children’s versions of the legend that I read, there was no such thing as an affair. He simply adored her from afar and managed the most amazing feats for nothing more than a smile ;-). But at one point I became bored with the Lancelots of this world, who, apart from their weakness for another man’s wife, never seemed to become human at any point. Lancelot didn’t get angry, or jealous, or evil; he never lacked in mercy, was never rude or sharp, let alone witty; and he never lost a fight. In short, he was dull. Not so with Gawain.
Gawain is, as I have recently read somewhere, elastic. In several medieval romances, he is Arthur’s noblest knight. When Lancelot is around, he is often ‘second only to Lancelot’ (a bit of a pathetic place to be in). In Grail stories, he either plays a very special, prominent role parallel to Percival’s, or he is a complete failure and nearly gets killed by Galahad. In Malory, he is powerful, but nevertheless superseded by several other knights, among whom his youngest brother Gareth. That is because in the Morte Darthur he is essentially weak as a personality -- fickle, shallow, sometimes violent, and on the whole not very likeable. In other texts too, Gawain gets into a fury from time to time (funny enough, one thing that particularly angers him is violence against animals), disobeys his king when he feels like it, and none of Arthur’s knights get into stranger situations than he. People are always forcing him into bed with their wives or daughters, waiting to see whether he’ll touch them or not (it is up to him to figure out which option is expected of him). Most knights who go questing for the Grail find, if anything, a cup and a bleeding spear, but Gawain’s quest is successful when he ends up the lord of a castle full of women and finds himself (yet) a(nother) wife. If Lancelot gets married at all, it is because he has been deceived into sleeping with a woman who passed herself off as Guinevere; Galahad is most definitely not his lovechild. Gawain, on the other hand, has countless lovers and seems to be equally enthusiastic about all of them. He gets married all the time, and more than once meets a handsome stranger who turns out to be his son by some past conquest. And for some reason, people insist on trying to chop off his head, or insist that he chop off theirs.
One thing that is the same in all stories is the deep affection Gawain and King Arthur have for each other. As Arthur’s eldest nephew, Gawain is often his successor, especially as in most stories, Arthur does not have a legitimate son to be his heir. Gawain is the only knight to whom Arthur lends Excalibur. He often functions as counsellor, and as a character who must bring strange phenomena under his uncle’s rule.
Gawain first arrives in Camelot as a very young man, to join the celebration of Arthur’s marriage to Guinevere. He is knighted, and at the behest of Merlin sent at once on a quest, together with his second brother Gaheris. The quest is a disaster: Gawain makes the worst possible knightly début ever. He vanquishes all his opponents, but ends up killing a woman. As his punishment, Queen Guinevere orders him to become the champion of all women. Gawain is supposed to take up the cause of any woman who asks for his assistance -- so sometimes you’ll see him fighting in defence of someone who is very simply in the wrong. He isn’t allowed to say no :D.
The working title of my current Gawain Project is The Ladies' Knight. That is one of Gawain's 'official' titles (another one is the Knight with the Golden Tongue), and obviously the aspect of him that interests me most *g*. I will be introducing the main characters and showing pictures in coming posts. I hope you enjoy them :-).
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no subject
Date: Sunday, 16 November 2008 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, 17 November 2008 09:35 pm (UTC)Who are your favourite Arthurian characters? *is curious*
no subject
Date: Monday, 17 November 2008 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, 17 November 2008 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, 17 November 2008 09:32 pm (UTC)*giant hugs back*
I'll do my best to update. I don't like being away from LJ, but I find that whenever I have time off, these days, I just lie on the sofa, so there are no new pictures to post :(. Still, my stories want out, so... :D
no subject
Date: Monday, 17 November 2008 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, 17 November 2008 09:29 pm (UTC)- No, seriously, I tend to toy with several stories at once, but I only actually work on one. In this case I have hopes of doing some Gawain work because I can see short stories there, whereas the Gauls are rather epic. But yes, I did go to a Celtic museum on my day off, to figure out how the suspension of Ambiorix's chariot is supposed to work :P. And I came back with replicas of Arvernian coins, one having Vercingetorix on it...
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 18 November 2008 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, 19 November 2008 08:39 pm (UTC)Very interesting stuff about Gawain! I know so little about Arthurian legend.