The Iron Coach
- THE IRON COACH - A black ink and black color pencil drawing on an 11 x 14 size coquille board. It appears in the booklet, "Guinevere & Lancelot" by Arthur Machen, published in 1986 by Purple Mouth Press (Cuyler W. Brooks, Jr.)
An illustrator's job is to select a scene that will represent the nature and mood of the story, and that means the inclusion of key elements that are in the story. In this case, the title of the story made my selection obvious, and so did this action scene in the story. The real problem was selecting a viewpoint in the action that would show all the elements I listed in my notes; The night of the full moon, the Iron Coach, the hands throwing flaming darts, the young boy, the coachman, the horses, and the old church.
I put my movie director's cap on, and with the night of the full moon in the sky, I went back far enough with my camera-eye so that I could place all the elements listed, between me and the moon. I ended up with the composition you see here.
Recently, I pulled a magazine from my bookshelf and while looking through the pages I stopped at the title page of a story, "The Golden Princess". There was a title page illustration and two other illustrations that accompanied the story, and none of them showed "The Golden Princess". ??? - It seems to me that the artist was obligated to show her, if not on the title page, then in one of the other drawings.
Readers may not be aware of, or even care about the effort I put into the making of my illustrations. But I care! And that's what readers should expect from me, and deserve when they put their money down for a magazine or a book that I illustrate.
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