Occasional Pics: Belated Birthday wishes for Marguerite

[Mamselle Miss]

This is going to sound really cheesy, but this phrase got stuck in my head when I saw this picture. "Enjolras, the bringer of Light" I'm pretty sure that it's borrowed from somewhere, I just can't remember where at the moment.

It's still a great picture Despard.

[9430]

Awesome! The intensity, and the imagery ...*swoons*. It is beautiful.

[Abelarda]

Beautiful picture, Despard! Simply beautiful. His eyes are so very intense...

[Inspector Karamazov]

OmG. He's gorgeous. I'm currently at the library and am trying not to giggle stupidly...

[Col.Despard]

Happy (belated) Birthday, Mme Bahorel!

If it wasn't 11.30 pm on a weeknight, I'd post the whole excerpts from the minutes of the Amis meeting held 8 April that accompany this pic. And will correct the gratuitous typos that crept in as I had only moments to add the captioning (and when it came to a choice between my blushes and delaying for another day, my blushes over embarrasing errors lost the day.

The whole thing is theft from a 19th century illo, of course! The original artist seems to have misread "17" for "47". Or has a very odd idea of what an angelic looking 17 year old looks like. Or just really, really objected to hot blond revolutionaries, and decided to fix Enjolras' petit bonnet rouge. And then took out his issues on the rest of the ABC, by making the majority of them pushing 50 (an ill-preseved 50).



I'll pop the version without the text up on DevArt. And will edit out the errors tomorrow!

[Aurelia Combeferre]

The caption is just perfect, Despard!

And eeh, all the boys! All on one page! This evening just gets better and better!

[Frédérique]

This is utterly wonderful! While the original picture could arguably only have been improved, you've adapted it with so much ... personality [or -ies]! So many discernible details in such a relatively dark and crowded image! Even if your take on les Amis as individuals hadn't become familiar already (always happy to see Bahorel and Prouvaire together!), it would still look more alive and colourful ... oh, all right, maybe the latter's mainly because of Enjolras' hair (... because I just noticed that Joly [presumably] touching the tip of his cane to his nose actually does appear in the original already - what a random detail for the illustrator to pick up on!).

[MmeBahorel]

They are fun, particularly Courfeyrac with his booze But ugh, now I'm all embarrassed. A polite "Thank you" never seems enough for such major public compliments. But thank you, and I'm totally practically blushing in front of my computer.

[9430]

Yay! This is a great pic, and it's nice to see all your Amis on paper together. And the caption is simply hilarious, especially Courfeyrac's amendment.

[Col.Despard]

You deserve something better than this, MmeBahorel, but I had to scrounge something up for you Am just so sorry about the sloppy typos. Consider it minuted by Prouvaire while stoned.

It's blatant theft, Aurelia, so I don't feel I can really take any credit for it...but it is the first time I've done all of them together! Need to figure out another scenario for them.

Frédérique, I'm so chuffed you picked up the Bahorel - Prouvaire proximity! I sort of worked on Joly being identifiable because of the cane (and yes - wow, that seems to indicate the illustrator did at least vaguely read the text, which makes me wonder all the more why he bolloxed so much up. Srsly. Enjolras: WTF?????). Although Lounging-with-Booze bloke looks more like contemporary interps of Combeferre, the pose just screamed Courfeyrac to me. So I changed the guy next to him to Combeferre, and gave him a more avidly-listening pose (although it looks a bit "avidly ogling Enjolras", which is all good). I figured Prouvaire was a good candidate for Gesturing-and-Talking-with-Animation bloke, so the one next to him had to be Bahorel. Feuilly is one of the few readily identifiable figures. Grantaire had to be the "Couldn't-give-a-toss-about-what-Gesturing-and-Talking-Bloke" is saying, so he's playing dominos. I figure Bossuet a likely candidate for Playing-Dominos-but-Still-Interested-in-Gesturing-Bloke's-Remarks man.

Many thanks, 9430! It's fun assembling them altogether!

[Cary]

YES!!!!! You've finally rectified that hideous error made over a hundred and forty years ago, that nobody had the good sense to correct.

[saves the picture]

Seriously, this is made of win. I'm glad you decided to tackle the project because really, this *is* what the Amis were supposed to have been like: not a bunch of ghastly, badly-aging chaps with receding hairlines (well, except Bossuet) and dubious number of remaining teeth, but a group of idealistic young students with a beautiful young man at the helm. I like how Joly (who's rubbing his nose with his cane, no?) is talking to Feuilly in the background, rather than playing dominos with Bahorel in the foreground as I'd originally imagined (it's Bossuet and Grantaire instead, and Bahorel is next to Prouvaire, as they strangely are throughout the book) - it's evidence of fanfiction influence (Marguerite's, yes?) sneaking in, and it makes it, I dunno, more personal somehow.

And bah, it's not stealing if it *improves* on the original!

[PS: Yes, Combeferre looks as if he's a little besotted with Enjolras. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.]

[Aurelia Combeferre]

I second Cary's sentiment. It's not blatant theft, it's correction Or reinterpretation, if you will!

[Ulkis]

That's awesome Despard. (Here's the original - scroll down just a tad - for anyone who hasn't seen it.) I forgot Enjolras kinda looked like Quasimodo in it. Yikes!

[Frédérique]

wow, that seems to indicate the illustrator did at least vaguely read the text, which makes me wonder all the more why he bolloxed so much up. Srsly. Enjolras: WTF?????

Yes, exactly! The chap in the cap would not necessarily have to mean that he read further than 'most were students but they were in contact with workers, too' or whatever it says (though that casts a rather murky light on the illustrator's idea of what students looked like; these are older than Tholomyès and his compagnions were in 1817!), but the cane/nose thing is ... he misses out on the fact[s] that Bossuet is bald (and that no-one else is specifically said to have as much as a receding hairline) and Enjolras is blond, but he picks up on that?! (Incidentally ... does anyone know - seriously - if there were any disadvantages for illustrators to drawing blond characters? 'Cause I've come across several lately whose radiant blondness gets a column of description in text and who are nonetheless depicted as dark- if not black-haired in the middle of the same page. Did the illustrators fear being accused of being miserly with their charcoal if they left too many light spaces?)
I actually spent a minute staring at Bahorel and Prouvaire trying to determine to whom the arms/hands belonged and whether they were possibly linked until I realised they both had to be Prouvaire's and Bahorel's were crossed. Ahem.

[Col.Despard]

Thanks Cary I've tidied it up a bit for the one I posted on my Dev Art account, though there are still a myriad of issues that could be addressed (including a really, really silly, comical error that I won't point out because if you haven't already spotted it, once you see it, it draws the eye). I'm always bemused by just how off some of the illustrations are. Like that one where Enjolras is about to go after Le Cabuc, and he resembles an Italian brigand who has been living rough for the last few years (but has maintained a very spiffy moustache). Given that he's one of the characters who gets a long, lovingly detailed physical description, it just seems unforgiveable. One illustrator, maybe, but the the majority seem to do it. And there's a consistent aging of the students. Among the few exceptions is the illustration of Enjolras cornered behind the billiard table - he certainly looks very young and blond there.

Which goes to Frédérique's point...given that most of these were etched onto plates, I would have actually thought that the illustrators would have emphasised blond hair as a contrast...particularly in this picture where it would have stood out against the atmospheric darkness. Perhaps he didn't want a rival for the point of illumination above their heads, or he thought it would ruin the general sense of secretive doings. There is a possibility that between the illustrator's rendering and the man who did the actual plate engraving, something was lost in translation. I know Rossetti was deeply grieved with how some of the plates for his illustrations of Tennyson turned out after the process (although, frankly, I think that they're stunning - particularly the one of the death of Arthur).

Cheers, Aurelia - I'll use that as an excuse next time I plagiarise someone and thanks for posting that original Ulkis - I should have put it up as a point of reference, so people could see what I was grumbling about!