Tuesday 1 January 2008

A New Year’s Resolution kept for one day, at least

I promise not to bother you with stuff like this too often, but one of the resolutions I made this year was to get back into the habit of drawing. I bought the BBC’s Complete Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare on DVD as a Christmas present to myself this year, so here’s a sketch I made of Anthony Quayle as Falstaff while watching Henry IV Part 2 this evening. Not too bad given that I haven’t held a pen or pencil to do anything but write since April, but I definitely need to improve the way I draw hands.

5 comments:

Walaka said...

Nicely done!

Siskoid said...

Yes!

And tell me more about this DVD set.

Swinebread said...

a lot better than the crap I draw! Good Work!

Steve Flanagan said...

Thanks, chaps.

Siskoid - The DVD box set is this one, containing (in nice little slim-line cases) the productions staged by the BBC in the late 1970s and early 1980s of all 37 plays then considered part of the canon (so Henry VIII/All is True is there, but The Two Noble Kinsmen, Edward III and Sir Thomas More aren't).

They are very conservative productions, partly because they were co-financed by Time-Life, which planned to sell them on video to schools. So, all are staged either in Elizabethan dress or to match the era in which they are set, there are relatively few cuts to the text, and there is no cinematic "opening-out"; all of which is fine by me.

My plan is, as I work through this set, to also watch the other versions I have of the same plays, or related works. So, tonight, I watched Orson Welles' Falstaff film The Chimes at Midnight; after Titus Andronicus, I watched the late 1990s Titus with Anthony Hopkins; and after The Taming of the Shrew it was Kiss Me, Kate. Three versions of Henry V next!

I've had my eye on this box set for over a year, but recently it has been widely available at half its original price.

Siskoid said...

Oh my God, Jacobi's Hamlet is in there? GET!!!

And of course, it's not available in Canada/Region 1.

I live in hope.