An Ocular-Centrist’s Representation of the Seventeenth Century
The overall visual style of my graphic novel is intended to be reminiscent of the woodcuts of the seventeenth century. However, my initial inspiration for the style of drawing that I used in my graphic novel came when our witchcraft seminar visited the Prints and Drawings Room of the National Gallery of Canada to view woodcuts and engravings by Albrecht Dürer. Even though Dürer's woodcuts are very much situated in sixteenth-century Germany, I found myself more naturally able to replicate some of the techniques he uses to create intricately detailed monochromatic prints. I also found that the illustrations collected by Ernst and Johanna Lehner in Devils, Demons, and Witchcraft was another valuable resource that helped me to create a style with an underlying tone that could easily shift from light to dark. It was important that the visual component of my graphic novel added to the historical tone and atmosphere of the narrative. However, because the majority of the narrative is understood through the visuals, I wanted the style to have some foundation within the visual culture of the time period. I address the evolution of the visual style of my graphic novel further in my project blog, but ultimately my intention was to emulate the style of visual art that would have been most accessible in the popular culture of that time period. In the following section, I will address the decision-making and creative process for the components that encapsulate the graphic narrative of this project; character design, mise en scene, dramaturgy and panel layout and the dialogue.
The success of my graphic novel is strongly tied to the representation of the historical actors within the narrative. I was initially intrigued by the idea of taking a more artistic and stylized approach to the character designs -- exaggerated and expressive features, somewhat removed from the more realistic designs which I ultimately settled. However, because the reader is dropped directly into a character-driven narrative I needed to be able to quickly establish who each character was and their role in the narrative. Audiences are more easily able to establish connections to characters that are expressive and have realistic proportions; the more realistic and human a character appears the more relatable they become. I go into a fair amount of detail about the fundamentals of drawing characters and how using basic shapes as the foundation of character design can be used to determine a character’s role within a narrative on my blog. However, I am now going to further touch on the nuances and details of character design, which I incorporated into my narrative to address the archetypes of heroes and villains.
On the surface, Matthew Hopkins and John Stearne are both classic heroic characters with youthful and handsome faces that are drawn to attract the reader and appear trustworthy. I had the fortune of being able to refer to a period woodcut print of Matthew Hopkins to identify key features that I would be able to incorporate into his design. I started out drawing both Hopkins and Stearne with body types that were typical of male heroes, muscular and trim, but I quickly changed this so that there was more diversity within the characters’ appearances making them more easy to differentiate and identify. Initially, this was only reflective in their hair colour and styles; because Hopkins is depicted with dark hair and a Van Dyke beard, therefore, I drew Stearne with blonde hair and because I knew he was most likely older than Hopkins, I gave him a full beard and few wrinkles around the eyes. Since the first version of their designs, Stearne has changed very little in appearance, I would hazard a guess that this is because I felt the most confident in my portrayal of him. Whereas Hopkins has gone through many changes. The first iteration of Hopkins that I drew depicted him without facial hair, as I was unsure whether this would significantly age his appearance, but he was so reminiscent of a Disney prince that I immediately began to practice drawing facial hair. Eventually, I decided to incorporate some hint of the illness which eventually killed Hopkins, tuberculosis, because I felt it added a sense of desperation to his actions - that perhaps from 1645 to 1647 he was attempting to give aid to those he could before dying. To hint at this illness without making him appear too sickly or unattractive, I gave him a more slender figure and sharper cheekbones. The advantage of giving both men sharp features; Hopkin’s jawline and cheekbones and Stearne’s nose and brow ridge, was that at times their appearance could walk the line between hero and villain. Unlike Gaule, whose weathered face, protruding nose and chin, and small narrow eyes are all intended to signal to the audience that he villainous character. Gaule and Hopkins are intentionally designed so that even their appearance is in opposition with one another, while still holding some minute similarities. Where Hopkins’s hair is dark, sleek and straight, Gaule’s is lighter, frizzy and curled; where Hopkins has a youthful face and delicately shaped nose, Gaule’s face is heavy with wrinkles and he has a bulbous nose; where Hopkins is clad in lighter, tailored clothing, Gaule wears long dark robes. Both figures have strong chins and defined jawlines and smaller frames compared to John Stearne or Benjamin Wyne. Margaret Moore’s character design has similar nuances built into it to suggest and elicit certain responses. I did not want to draw a buxom beauty or a haggard crone, I wanted Moore to appear very plain and almost remarkable. I wanted her to appear to be middle-aged and to appear as though she had lived a hard and tiring life. To suggest this I decided that she needed to have a small, delicately built frame. Despite being intent on Moore having a plain appearance, I eventually decided that I wanted there to be some suggestion that when she was young she had been quite beautiful. I did this by angling and widening her eyes, as well as giving her a fuller lip. However, because everything was in black and white very subtle changes to her facial features resulted in a very different character. In giving Margaret Moore full lips, I was treading into the territory of glamour that I wanted to avoid and so Moore’s mouth became thin and less remarkable.
As I’ve mentioned before, the purpose of these portrayals is for the reader to feel conflicted about their interpretation of the characters via their appearance when confronted with their actions later in the narrative. Each character in the narrative has moments where their role as hero or villain is suddenly reversed. I included subtle indicators into the character designs to highlight this duality or to help emphasize specific moments. For example, Matthew Hopkins is the only character in the graphic novel seen wearing a cape, a symbol firmly rooted in heroism. Another example would be Margaret Moore’s nose and wart, which are intended to echo those of the Wicked Witch of West. The hopes I had doing this was to indicate to the reader the range of ways actors can be represented and to unsettle the very “black and white” contemporary attitude towards anything.
I had anticipated that I would delve into a great deal of research on animation, and a little bit of psychology as well, when I was working on the character design stage of my project. However, I did not anticipate how much additional historical research I would need to create mise-en-scène that contributed to my narrative as well as being historically accurate. Constructing the historical setting within each panel required research on the architecture of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, as well as research on decorative arts, interiors of tavern and inns, horse bridles, and horse anatomy. As is the case when attempting to find references for the life of the lower classes, I turned to Dutch paintings of working life, specifically those by Adriaen van Ostade such as: Peasants in an Interior, 1661; An Alchemist, 1661; The Peasant Settling His Debt, 1644. The work of Dutch painters in the seventeenth century was invaluable to helping me create historically appropriate settings and costumes for this graphic novel. However, I also drew inspiration from set designs and costuming in historical dramas such as BBC’s The Musketeers and Channel 4’s The Devil’s Whore, both of which are set in the sixteenth century.







