Y is for Yang Xiong — from Water Margin by Shi Nai’an

Well, I had to once again break my self-imposed rule of doing only characters from books I’ve actually read. And, again, I could have easily avoided this with a bit of advance planning. Ygritte from The Song of Ice and Fire series would have been a great “Y”, but I already did Brienne from that same series for my “B”.

Anyway, this fellow is Yang Xiong from Water Margin, a 14th century Chinese novel that’s considered to be one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature. In the story Yang Xiong winds up killing his adulterous wife, which is why I have him wielding a knife–but also why I tried to give him a somewhat pained expression.

According to Wikipedia, “The Water Margin describes Yang Xiong as a good looking man with flowery tattoos all over his body. He has thick eyebrows, eyes like those of a phoenix and a few strands of beard on his chin. ” I forgot the beard–sorry!

I’ve clothed him here in a traditional Han Chinese Shenyi:

Next week: the very last of the series, “Z”…

You can find all the AlphaBooks entries to-date at the AlphaBooks tumblr: http://alphabooks.tumblr.com. You can also follow many of the entries as they’re posted in real-time by following the #AlphaBooks hashtag on Twitter on Mondays.

X is for Xavier Desmond – from Wild Cards by George R. R. Martin

Well, this is for sure one of my least favorite AlphaBooks illos. First off, I don’t really like the drawing very much. My wife was out of town this past weekend and the extra child-wrangling took a lot of my sketching time that I might have used for a second draft of this one. Additionally, in order to get an “X” subject, I wound up breaking my self-imposed rule of using only characters from books I’ve actually read.  I foolishly used up Harry Potter as a source with Luna Lovegood; I should have held out and done her father, Xeno Lovegood, for “X.”

Anyway… Wild Cards is one of those “shared universe” projects were different writers write short stories that take place in the same fictional universe.  You can read about it here. It’s set in an alternate post-WWII U.S. where an alien virus causes some of the people it infects to mutate–as with Xavier here who winds up sprouting an elephant-like trunk with a seven-fingered hand at the end of it.

Next week: “Y”…

You can find all the AlphaBooks entries to-date at the AlphaBooks tumblr: http://alphabooks.tumblr.com. You can also follow many of the entries as they’re posted in real-time by following the #AlphaBooks hashtag on Twitter on Mondays.

Ok, technically he’s John Wemmick, but he’s referred to simply as “Wemmick” throughout most of the book. So…

W is for Wemmick – from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Wemmick is one of my favorite characters from all of Dickens’ writing. Wemmick is a bill collector for Jaggers who winds up befriending Pip. Despite his stodgy career, it’s revealed later in the novel that he’s hilariously eccentric. He lives in “Walsworth,” which is what he calls the house he’s had constructed in the likeness of a miniature castle–complete with draw bridge, moat, and a cannon that he fires off at regular intervals.  He lives there with his father, whom he refers to as “Aged Parent”-or “Aged P” for short.

Here’s how Wemmick is described in the novel:

Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dints. The chisel had made three or four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth them off. I judged him to be a bachelor, from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared to have sustained a good many bereavements; for he wore at least four mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I noticed, too, that several rings and seals hung at his watch-chain, as if he were quite laden with remembrances of departed friends. He had glittering eyes — small, keen, and black — and thin wide mottled lips. He had had them, to the best of my belief, from forty to fifty years.

I’m much happier with Wemmick’s clothing here than I was with The Time Traveller, who was supposed to be from a similar period but who really didn’t look it. I’m also reasonably happy with the character design and pose. I did an initial sketch that I wasn’t very happy with; I’m glad I re-did it.

I have no clue what I’m going to do for next week’s “X” subject. Xenofilius Lovegood would have been a good choice, but I’ve already done a Harry Potter character.

Next week: “X”…

You can find all the AlphaBooks entries to-date at the AlphaBooks tumblr: http://alphabooks.tumblr.com. You can also follow many of the entries as they’re posted in real-time by following the #AlphaBooks hashtag on Twitter on Mondays.