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| Art by Ben Wickey |
Well, we are back again with Ben! This time I selected four Enchanters and he told me the secrets of their biographic pages starting from... the original art he created! Enjoy!
(Grazie mille, Ben!)
ALEISTER CROWLEY
(Enchanter n. 37, page 243)
Ben Wickey: The Crowley page was perhaps the most daunting, from a drafting and coloring standpoint. The preliminary inked-up version seen here looks simple enough. This page has more tiers than any other and so fitting the images with the many text boxes took a while to plan. Alan's thumbnail sketch was straightforward, except for the fact that he didn't specify where to fit all that text! It was left up to me, and I hope I did a decent job.
In the final tier, you can see Crowley on his deathbed, and blue lightning is disturbing the window curtains. This is based on a story I had heard in an interview with Crowley's final partner, Deirdre McClellan, who described seeing the curtains blowing across the room and hearing a giant peel of thunder just after Crowley's death, "which is, I think, the gods greeting him."
*****
AUSTIN OSMAN SPARE
(Enchanter n. 40, page 246)
Ben Wickey: This page is perhaps my favorite of the Great Enchanters, only in that it is totally unique among the rest. Without a single drop of ink, I drew the entire thing with a very sharp pencil. I was trying to get a sense of Spare's style. Once scanned, I digitally added an overlay layer of old parchment over the drawing and then etched on top of that, pulling the highlights out. I rather liked the result. Notice William Blakes' face among the clouded jumble of "past lives" Spare was endeavoring to access with his art.
*****
H.P. LOVECRAFT
(Enchanter n. 42, page 248)
Ben Wickey: This preliminary art for the Lovecraft page of the Great Enchanters shows the "bare bones" of what I wanted to achieve later digitally. Because the paper I was working on was so small (as I could not then afford a bigger scanner) I wanted to get the essential ink and graphite textures down first, and then add more Lovecraftian detail when I could digitally zoom in. As a New Englander, who grew up in the same settings as many of Lovecraft's stories, there are many details I wanted to get right, however small. Through Lovecraft's window in the first panel, I digitally drew the left-hand side of the home of Sarah Helen Whitman, the poet who at one time had been temporarily engaged to Edgar Allan Poe shortly before his death. I also hid the Cathedral of St. John, adjacent to Whitman's house, the churchyard of which served as a place of courtship between Poe and Whitman.
In panel 2, I wanted the Cthulhu looming over the authors to more resemble Lovecraft's original sketch of the Cthulhu idol: a rather portly, frumpy fellow with three eyes on either side of his bulbous head.
Other elements on this page like Lovecraft's grave were things that I wanted to achieve in a somewhat photorealistic way, since they are objects and places that can still be visited. In panel 4, I digitally added houses behind Lovecraft that I associated with his work: on the left I drew the Bowen House in Marblehead, MA, which was mentioned in Lovecraft's story, The Festival, and on the right I drew the house of my friend, Bill, in Salem, MA. Bill is a big Lovecraft fan, so I wanted to surprise him.
*****
(Enchanter n. 47, page 267)
Ben Wickey: This one seemed very natural to me. As I said in our previous interview, I have been drawing William Burroughs since I was a teenager. The portrait in the final panel was especially a delight, as I got to draw him as I had always had. In high school I did a big pen-and-ink drawing of Burroughs as the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, which still seems rather appropriate considering he's speaking cryptically while smoking a hookah. Getting to draw Burroughs for a magical grimoire was therefore a profound experience, and felt like I was completing a circle.
The people behind Burroughs in panel 2, watching the infamous "William Tell act" that caused the death of his wife Joan, are based on the actual photographs taken by the Mexican press. I found a lot of pictures of the witnesses just after the event happened, and drew them into the scene to create what (I hope) is a historically-authentic depiction. I also found the name and likeness of the Shaman who exorcised the "ugly spirit" from Burroughs. It was also fun to draw Alan Ginsberg four different times in this book, at various stages of his life.
If you like, you can read it in Italian on Quasi magazine, HERE!
