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Late mermay warmup

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View of the Venoge : my brother and sister drawing near the river

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Beach Gnomes

With some mermaids just in time for mermay

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Vue de la Venoge vers La Sarraz (View of the Venoge near La Sarraz).

Pens, watercoor and gouache. Part of the Cent Vues de la Venoge (100 Views of the Venoge)

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"[…] he looked at the scabbard Accalon wore and recognized it at once. Then he went to him quickly and tore it from him and threw it as far away as he could. Then the maiden took off her spell, so that Accalon was at once as vigorous as he had been before, but when he saw that he had lost his sword and the scabbard in which he had so trusted, there was nothing that could comfort him, for he saw at once that he was beginning to bleed from all the wounds the king had given him that day, and he had not been bleeding before."

— Post-Vulgate Suite du Merlin (trans. Martha Asher §38 in Lacy)

Arthur is forced by Morgana to fight her lover Accolon, who she gave his sword Excalibur, while Arthur gets a replica. The scabbard that comes with it protects his wearer from bleeding, so Arthur tears it away and all his wounds open. Afterwards, Morgana throws the scabbard into a lake, and it was never used again, except, the text says, when it was given to Gawain by Marsique to fight Naborn.

In this scene Accolon actually lets go of the sword thanks to a spell by the Lady of the Lake, but I felt it was more dramatic that way — and generally, I do not look up the original text before starting to plan an illustration, I try to catch the vibe I remember more than the verbatim.

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WIP Arthur vs. Accolon

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Naptime

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Gnomes' hobbies

Skyrim fanfic vs. Arthurian researches

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Came upon this old ad for Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, the third Alexandre Dumas novel in the Musketeers trilogy, and when I drew my own illustration of that scene in 2018, I think I had not seen this engraving. Not that surprising, but seems to confirm that the duel between De Wardes and Buckingham Jr. with the tide engulfing them is one of the most thrilling and iconic scenes in the Musketeers saga, for readers back then as much as now.

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This gnome is trying to figure out the links between the various stories in arthurian literature.

(Watercolor, pens, pencils, 21x14.5cm)

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Retour à la Venoge, vue de loin. Vers Cuarnens.

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Lancelot is poisoned by drinking water with snakes in it, he inflates from the venom and loses all his hair. A damsel grinds remedies for him with the pommel of his sword and takes care of him. (Lancelot propre)

"And if I cure him, wouldn't it be justice that he be mine?"

Problem : Lancelot cannot love her back as his heart is already pledged to Guinevere, so the damsel starts dying from lovesickness, and thus cannot heal Lancelot anymore, whose health deteriorates. Will Lancelot be forced to love the damsel if only to stay alive? Well, that's what Lionel advises him to do, because if he dies, then Guinevere will also die of a broken heart and he wouldn't want that! (He gets away by promising to be her "friend" and then when healed and she asks him to follow up on said promise, he said his heart is pledged entirely to Guinevere, so they agree to have a chaste and virginal relationship where Lancelot would defend her as "son amie" and she forsakes all carnal relationships entirely)

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WIP : another Lancelot illustration

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Proper post for this Lancelot illustration, from the beginning of the Merveilles de Rigomer (The Marvels of Rigomer, 13th c.) where Lancelot's armor and horse are taken by bandits and he wanders away angrily, pulling out a fence's wooden post as a makeshift weapon.

"He implores God to destroy them and cast them in hell. But he stops himself : I should not talk that way. Cursing is a lousy vengeance. God preserves them, until the day I shall take revenge properly."

Found that a pretty badass line. (He avenges himself later)

In the original he can keep his clothes, but I felt a nuder Lancelot fitted better. The armor is a wider theme in this novel, where people are scared of Lancelot because he stays in armor, and the like.

There are a lot of arthurian illustrations that I think I never posted here or cleaned, and a few in the works also. I should work on putting them all in one place with a blurb explaining them.

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In La Mort le Roi Artu (The Death of King Arthur, c. 1220), when Lancelot and Guinevere are caught in the act they are actually around fifty and their relationship has lasted for 20-30 years.

Wanted to do a few illustrations that try to capture that dimension because adaptations tend to have them very young.

(In the text, Guinevere is explicitely past fifty, Lancelot is a bit younger, and the chronology is not always coherent but Gawain is 76 and Arthur is 92)

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Almost a calendar

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Last gnomes