#illustratethebrick

This week we’re drawing 2.1, Waterloo!

This week we’re illustrating 1.7, The Champmathieu Affair

Welcome back, everyone! As mentioned in earlier announcements, we're backtracking a bit to sync up a little with the  lesmis365 readalong and to give people a chance to catch up on earlier chapters!  

Hello everyone, if anyone is still around. A lot of stuff happened between the last time I updated this project/had any momentum at all. But with lesmis365 going on, pilferingapples suggested that we sync up the schedules so that we'd all get more time to catch up and recombobulate. I'm still up for doing this, and if anyone else is also interested, I'll be redoing the calendar soon to get it all organized again.

Thanks!

Illustrate the Brick: 3.3.7

The Grandfather and The Grandson: Some Petticoat

Hapgood:

Marius, with his forehead clasped in his hands, was kneeling upon the grass on a grave. He had strewn his bouquet there. At the extremity of the grave, on a little swelling which marked the head, there stood a cross of black wood with this name in white letters: COLONEL BARON PONTMERCY. Marius' sobs were audible.

The "lass" was a grave.

French:

Marius, le front dans ses deux mains, était agenouillé dans l'herbe sur une fosse. Il y avait effeuillé son bouquet. À l'extrémité de la fosse, à un renflement qui marquait la tête, il y avait une croix de bois noir avec ce nom en lettres blanches: Colonel Baron Pontmercy. On entendait Marius sangloter.

As for Fantine, she was a joy to behold. Her splendid teeth had evidently received an office from God,—laughter. She preferred to carry her little hat of sewed straw, with its long white strings, in her hand rather than on her head. Her thick blond hair, which was inclined to wave, and which easily uncoiled, and which it was necessary to fasten up incessantly, seemed made for the flight of Galatea under the willows. Her rosy lips babbled enchantingly. The corners of her mouth voluptuously turned up, as in the antique masks of Erigone, had an air of encouraging the audacious; but her long, shadowy lashes drooped discreetly over the jollity of the lower part of the face as though to call a halt. There was something indescribably harmonious and striking about her entire dress. She wore a gown of mauve barege, little reddish brown buskins, whose ribbons traced an X on her fine, white, open-worked stockings, and that sort of muslin spencer, a Marseilles invention, whose name, canezou, a corruption of the words quinze aout, pronounced after the fashion of the Canebiere, signifies fine weather, heat, and midday.

Les Miserables, Vol. I, book 3 - in the year 1817

Right, then. I'd thought about meeting Illustrate the Brick where it was now, but - well, for one I couldn't get my drawing of Gillenormand to look anything like I had in mind but also - I really want to get into digital drawing with this, and I think it'd be neat if my drawings improved as the story progresses. That, and I feel that if I jump in again now, as we're in vol. three and things get interesting, feels like cheating. So instead I went back to where I'd left off.

(Still no guarantee I'll actually get back on track with anything resembling a regular basis)

Illustrate the Brick 3.2.8

The Great Bourgeois: Two Do Not Make A Pair

Hapgood:

Let us say it plainly, Mademoiselle Gillenormand had gained rather than lost as she grew older. This is the case with passive natures. She had never been malicious, which is relative kindness; and then, years wear away the angles, and the softening which comes with time had come to her. She was melancholy with an obscure sadness of which she did not herself know the secret. There breathed from her whole person the stupor of a life that was finished, and which had never had a beginning.

She kept house for her father...There was also in this house, between this elderly spinster and this old man, a child, a little boy, who was always trembling and mute in the presence of M. Gillenormand. M. Gillenormand never addressed this child except in a severe voice, and sometimes, with uplifted cane: "Here, sir! rascal, scoundrel, come here!—Answer me, you scamp! Just let me see you, you good-for-nothing!" etc., etc. He idolized him.

This was his grandson. We shall meet with this child again later on.

French:

Disons-le, en vieillissant Mlle Gillenormand avait plutôt gagné que perdu. C'est le fait des natures passives. Elle n'avait jamais été méchante, ce qui est une bonté relative; et puis, les années usent les angles, et l'adoucissement de la durée lui était venu. Elle était triste d'une tristesse obscure dont elle n'avait pas elle-même le secret. Il y avait dans toute sa personne la stupeur d'une vie finie qui n'a pas commencé.

Elle tenait la maison de son père...Il y avait en outre dans la maison, entre cette vieille fille et ce vieillard, un enfant, un petit garçon toujours tremblant et muet devant M. Gillenormand. M. Gillenormand ne parlait jamais à cet enfant que d'une voix sévère et quelquefois la canne levée:—Ici! monsieur!—Maroufle, polisson, approchez!—Répondez, drôle!—Que je vous voie, vaurien! etc., etc. Il l'idolâtrait.

C'était son petit-fils. Nous retrouverons cet enfant.

This week will be 3.3 The Grandfather and the Grandson!