The Owl and the Pussy-cat

The marriage of 'The Owl and the Pussy-cat', an illustration by JVL for The Nonsense Verse of Edward Lear, Cape, 1992 and republished in 2012 to celebrate the bicentenary of Edward Lear's birth. 

The marriage was conducted 'By the Turkey who lived on the hill'. This illustration took 16 hours and 49 minutes to draw

Another cat - this time an illustration by JVL from Aesop's Fables, Cape, 1989.
It happened to be a portrait of our own cat 'Ginny'.

Humpty Dumpty

'Humpty Dumpty', an illustration by JVL for Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, published by Artists' Choice Editions, 2011.


"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less,"

The Hunting of the Snark (match, pin, slate etc.)

Illustrations for The Hunting of the Snark, Artists' Choice Editions, 2006.

For The Hunting of the Snark there are a few instances when I have drawn illustrations that are essentially figures of speech. A match was not struck in reality on the Snark’s hide, nor did a pin actually drop when the Snark pronounced the pig’s sentence amid the hushed silence in court. I have thus illustrated these subjects in the spirit of nonsense. Similarly we are not able to hear the Jubjub’s voice but it reminded the Butcher of his school days – the sound of a pencil squeaking on a slate. And so we can see the sound of a squeak in the same way as the notion of a pin dropping. When the crew continued their search, after they had lost the Baker, they found ‘not a button, or feather, or mark’. No forensic evidence was left to help them trace ‘where the Baker had met with the Snark’. I have thus chosen to draw what wasn’t there.

The Baker's 42 boxes

The Baker's 42 boxes from Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, Artists' Choice Editions, 2006.
Reminding me of Boxing Day, which was yesterday.

What's it all about?

14 members of the family are having a great Christmas in Somerset.

'The Daddy Long-legs and the Fly'

More insects.
This time 'The Daddy Long-legs and the Fly' from The Nonsense Verse of Edward Lear, which has just been republished by Jonathan Cape in 2012 to celebrate the bicentenary of Edward Lear's birth.

The Wasp in the Wig

An illustration from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, Artists'Choice edition, 2011 ('Specials' Edition).

Lewis Carroll was urged to drop this chapter in which a wasp in a wig appears. This episode only turned up again when a pile of galley proofs was auctioned at a sale of manuscripts in 1974, at Sotheby’s. The Lewis Carroll Society later published ‘The Wasp in the Wig’ in 1977. When John Tenniel was illustrating Through the Looking-Glass in 1870 he wrote to Lewis Carroll, saying:

‘Don’t think me brutal, but I am bound to say that the ‘wasp’ chapter does not interest me in the least, & I can’t see my way to a picture.

 If you want to shorten the book, I can’t help thinking – with all submission – that there is your opportunity’.


Tenniel also wrote: ‘A wasp in a wig is altogether beyond the appliances of art’.

Well, there is a challenge I thought, so here is a wasp in a wig. At one time we thought of including this chapter in the book but upon reflection we agreed with Tenniel. However we have included an illustration of the wasp as a print in the 'Specials' edition.

(Quotations from Collingwood, The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll, T. Fisher Unwin, 1898, pp 146-9)

Tracebridge & Cradley drawings

Here is a first post: sketches from a notebook drawing.