Sketchbook - 'The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs'

This was one of my favourite stories so far and the drawing I like best is the frog/toad. I used a really characterful medieval drawing as the reference and I used COPIC pens and fineliner, and I think it’s quite amazing to see how ink and pens (or quills) have developed over the centuries, but also that we even still use them so much in art after all this time. After I discovered how much I like the use of backgrounds or borders, I layered the frog on top of two different papers which I drew patterns on with silver metallic pen; I noticed that a lot of the bestiary images have gold around them so I wanted to include this element of ‘shininess’. I think the mouse is less successful because it isn’t such a distinctive shape and the colours are dull, but the way I have placed it doesn’t elevate it in any way either. The donkey is also done in COPICs, fineliner and metallic pen, and I think the lines are very strong and assertive as I did each line in single confident strokes. The colours I used are based on what I’ve seen a lot in my research images, and I like that the donkey is coming out of the frame rather than being refined to a box. I think it’s cool to get a sense of movement even though the image is very flat. Trailing across to the other page is an army of ants that I drew but I decided that adding the legs would look too cluttered. To me the ants represent the presence of something rotten as I have often observed ants carrying dead bugs and dropped bits of food, dragging them underground. This is also relevant in the context of the story where three things in the village are corrupt and no longer have their magical properties, and although the ants don’t necessarily play a role in this, they still add the unease of there being something dead or ‘gone off’. The ant trail leads to a drawing of the devil, a symbol of death which pairs well with the idea of decay represented by the ants, but it doesn’t look very scary really so maybe I should have chosen a different reference image.

Lastly I dedicated a page to playing with border designs which I had collected from my research into medieval imagery. I used COPICs with my silver pen for the patterns and I think they look quite beautiful when the light bounces off them. They are a very decorative element of my theme but I don’t think there is anything wrong with that - especially since I want to draw on ideas of tradition and in the past, art was solely made for the sake of looking powerful and beautiful, compared to a lot of contemporary work which is about conveying a message informed by the current state of the world or simply getting a reaction and causing chaos.

Reference Images:

Frogs - 


Golden Apples -

Mice/ rats -

Devils -
Donkeys -



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