I can hardly bring myself to include one of my Bellamy-influenced
drawings alongside the real thing but here are a couple from around
1975, drawn towards the end of my time at the Royal College of Art.
It's from the picture strip format local history section of my first
book, A Sketchbook of the Natural History of the Country Round
Wakefield.
The first shows Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes,
the local Iron Age tribe, below Castle Hill, Huddersfield, handing
over the rebel King Caratacus to the Romans.
The second shows Venutius, ex-husband of Cartimandua,
making his last stand against the Roman IXth Legion at his stronghold
in the Yorkshire Dales.
 Unlike
Bellamy I did 'cheat': Cartimandua's chariot is from the set of
Airfix Ancient Britons, one inch high figures which matched
the scale of model railways. Did Airfix think that Stonehenge was
a prototype for the monorail?
That's enough nostalgia for today.
If it looks like art it's probably someone else's art
I think the point about all this is that we've got to have heroes
and absorb what we can of their work when we're developing as artists
but if you try too literally to immitate an artist you admire your
drawings will look mannered. Bellamy went off and scowled in a mirror
to see how a drawing should work. He didn't, thank goodness, go
to check out how Joseph Shuster drew Superman.
I'm not as good looking as Bellamy was, so I tend to avoid mirrors!
Related Links
Eagle
Airfix
Figures
Frank Bellamy |
