Writing
We’ve finally come to the part in our Hero’s Journey where Alexander is given some Worldbuilding Exposition and a Mysterious Fancy Necklace from a strange lady of the lake.
Not just any necklace however. It’s the wonder stone!
Aside from some explanation regarding the quest, the first half of this Chapter is about how kings and great men had always pursued but never achieved their goal for immortality. Attentive readers may also recognise some parallels (of the characters, themes, structure and setting especially) with a particular ancient epic given the set up of the previous Chapters up to now…
but hey, this is Alexander! He’s a different kind of king – not like all the others – and whatever he puts his mind into, he gets it.
(We will see more in Chapter 7… the final Chapter of Book 1! OMG)
Thumbnailing and Sketching
Tools
Thumbnails: Moleskine notebook, mechanical pencil
Sketches: Procreate, iPad with Apple pencil
Time taken
Thumbnails: 10 minutes.
Sketches: 2-ish days without breaks, spread over multiple weeks of illness, stress and an overseas move.
Inking and Colouring
Tools
Inks: Procreate, iPad with Apple pencil
Colours and Letters: ipad, Procreate, Photoshop
Time taken
Inks: Everything’s a bit of a blur unfortunately… due to the aforementioned life events.
Colours: It’s definitely a shorter time than inks, for sure.
Research
The Lady’s house and the Lady herself are anachronistic blends of two similar Alexander Romance motifs. One in which Alexander encounters a wall/fortress/castle/mansion and meets gatekeepers who refuse to let him through, but gives him a souvenir as compensation. (“I went to X and all I got was this.”) The other in which he manages to enter a palace and discovers all sorts of wonders, from automata to booby-traps to
fantastical treasures. The closest variant that my retelling is based on is the variant where Alexander accesses by boat a city on an island in a river and is then given a stone with strange properties.
A wonder stone (or jewel) is a common enough object in the Romance, connected in some way to the Land of Darkness or Alexander’s quest for immortality. The stone
here is based on Nizami’s version, where it’s a key that shines light in a realm of pitch blackness (Canto LXIX, pages 798-800) and is a trinket that’s heavier than a mountain, lighter than dust (Canto LXX, pages 811). With a little easter egg of the stone coming out a fish’s belly (here’s an illumination from a copy of the 14th century Trebizond Alexander Romance, Codex 5 in Istituto Ellenico di Venezia).
The stone as a prop I designed went through a few iterations. At first it was simply a loose blue worry stone that Alexander kept in a pocket and held in his hand, as depicted in the original Prologue.
Early ‘standing in a white background’ drawings of Alexander, Bucephalus, the Servant, the Lady (?), young Alex and Nicolaos, and two griffins. Some props like a wreath crown and the stone are featured.
Then it became a necklace, part of Alexander’s outfit – so that its place in the story and his journey isn’t easily forgotten. (Plus I can’t explain where a pocket would exist on his chiton).