Platypus of Truth

 A little more work put in during spare moments.

 

This post is edited from a letter on Hope Mirrlees' Lud in the Mist First, thanks for passing on "Lud in the Mist". It's the kind of book I'm constantly hunting for and have increased trouble finding lately (Phantasties, Idylls of the King, The Last Unicorn, Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, The Queen of Elfland's Daughter, anything by William Morris, and the short stories of Clark Ashton Smith having already been encountered). There are very few books that I read at a positively leisurely pace for pure pleasure anymore and this was one of them. Second, I'm a historian and connector by nature and training, so I often access a book by linking it in with everything I've already read and letting my thoughts whirl like the music of the spheres. It seems like to immediately jump in to discussing Lud like that does violence to the Art. I feel the same way about Phantastes. I don't even know if Phantastes can be discussed in that way. Hope Mirrlee...

Summer has returned, though you wouldn't know it in Texas right now. Whatever the weather may be doing (and it's appreciated), school is out and that means that it's time for a new "Seven Heavens of Summer Reading". Stuff has been piling up on the shelves, so there's lots to work through. In the comics department, Valiant Comics is leading the field with Divinity , XO Manowar: Soldier , and Britannia: We Who Are About to Die . All of these are absolutely excellent middle-brow fair. Historical reading finds me following up last summer's A Storm of Spears  with Christopher Matthew's new ANZAC salvo on all things hoplite Beyond the Gates of Fire . We'll see if Matthew's team can send old V.D. Hanson's Western Way of War running for cover by showing that their models of hoplite battle can shed new light on the well trodden sands of Thermopylae. In the Fantasy genre, my wife and I are taking a second trip through The Last Unicorn  after s...

Taking another shot at the Red Bull from "The Last Unicorn" with my toned paper this time. The figure of the Red Bull is one of the most fascinating symbols in the book. What is its range of meanings? Is it the disenchanting force of greed? of reason? of secularism? It seems as though the Bull is Fire and the Unicorn is Water, but what does that mean? As with all fairy tales, we don't need to know for the tale to speak to us. As Tennyson said of the Three Queens in his "Idylls of the King": "They are Faith, Hope, and Charity, but they are also more than that". If the Bull is a true mythic symbol, then it means more that any one meaning we could reduce it to.

Here I am putting my brown paper to its proper use. This is a sketch for what will hopefully become a pastel drawing on black paper of the Lady Amalthea and the wizard Mabruk from Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn .

Sketches for a pastel composition of Lady Amalthea confronting the wizard Mabruk in Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn .

Reading "The Last Unicorn" with the Mrs. This is my first attempt at one of the iconic moments in the book where the Unicorn first encounters the Red Bull of King Haggard. It's a colored pencil sketch that will hopefully serve as a preliminary to a later pastel drawing. Art work has been difficult for the past few months, so I'm glad to finally be well enough to get anything out.