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.