English Magicians

I have been remiss in recent months in entertaining my readers with works of fan fiction - this will not do, sir, this will not do! By way of amends, it is my great pleasure this week to present some illustrations of the fabulous "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell". 

(switching back to 21st Century English...)

The TV series was so visually perfect, and the acting of a universally high standard, it's been hard to pick any scenes - these two have been taken essentially at random. I wanted to experiment with my digital cross-hatching techniques - normally reserved for my own improvised comics work - with something darker and visually richer - and also to play around with adding a few found objects, to add to the atmosphere. The second scene, featuring Stephen Black and Mr Segundus, was an experiment in adding in the sort of lengthy footnotes to a comic-book narrative that make the original novel such a deeply immersive pleasure.

The characters in the story are copyright of Susanna Clarke, and the images that my drawings are based on are copyright the BBC. This is just a piece of "fan fiction", unlike the majority of my work.

Cast (only those that appear in the illos above)

Mr. Norrell - Eddie Marsan

Jonathan Strange - Bertie Carvel

Lascelles - John Heffernan

Stephen Black - Ariyon Bakare

Mr Segundus - Edward Hogg