The making of… Guy of Warwick

Okay. Warwickshire. I’m so not a landscape painter. So my response to Warwickshire had to be… human. So I wanted something peopleish that says Warwickshire to me. Had to be Guy of Warwick, really. The clue’s in the name. And slaying the Dun Cow. On Dunsmore Heath. Where I live. 

You may object that its a Mediaeval story. Where’s the relevance? But relief printing is a Mediaeval craft. So it fits. And as I suggested in the previous post, there’s plenty for today if you think about it. It’s not just for dead people. 

This is the first version of the picture as it came into my mind. 

 Man and horse and cow as one combined shape. When I was a kid the Daily Mirror carried a comic strip called Andy Capp. It was the misadventures of a gambling, hard-drinking, brawling working-class bloke. It spoke of the environment I grew up in, and seemed perfectly normal to me. Anyway, the periodic fights outside the pub were shown as a grey cloud with fists and boots sticking out at random places. That’s how I saw this battle. Very cartoon-like, which seemed to me to fit with an overall chap-book vibe. 

I started trying out what the different “characters” would be like: Guy, the Dun Cow and the horse.

 

Then other things started creeping in. I thought about placing the battle on Knightlow Hill with a view of Coventry in the distance. And an audience. The audience ended up being a monk and a naked woman caught in flagrante delicto behind a wayside cross. 

 

I’d got some way in cutting the block before I decided this was all just a bit much and reverted to the original idea. Hence the two printed fragments of the naked woman and the cross. 

My wife suggested printing it in brown, “so it would be a dun cow.” It also has that sepia/faded look that hints at age. I always try to cut “meaningfully”, even if I’m clearing largish areas. I cut the sky horizontally, the sloping ground at an angle, the long grass in clumps. Then I see if and when any of it shows up in the proof prints, I can decide whether it adds anything to the design and cut away or let stand as I see fit. 

I’ve enjoyed this foray into “historic Warwickshire” so much, I feel fired up to do another similar scale picture as a companion. Lady Godiva, I think. A different kind of heroism, but heroism nonetheless. Let’s see if I manage it.