Tori Amos - spies
The song is about benevolent beings from Cornwall to England and was originally intended as a lullaby written for her daughter, Tash who was having nightmares about a bat that had found it’s way into her room.
The lyrics are full of benevolent beings or ‘spies’ that take the forms of things like aardvarks and hippos, keeping vigilant watch for ‘thieving meanies’ who also make an appearance.
The original brief for me was to draw a long, panoramic, urban scene to serve as a backdrop that could be panned across throughout the duration of the video. Characters, symbols and text would emerge, superimposed across the surface, in sync with the lyrics as the story unfolded.
Tori wanted Cornwall to feature somehow, so I merged and transformed the urban architecture into an open beach scene with a mysterious figure walking through it at the very end.
The drawing was 50 x 150cm using layers of willow charcoal to get depth and details into the visuals. I also drew the characters which is something I’ve never done before, but enjoyed the challenge of bringing the lyrics to life.
In the full drawing above I mixed areas that were quite vague and open that would allow for characters to be embedded into the scene, with areas that involved several layers of drawing to bring depth and detail.
In the close up you can see the layers, gradually built by adding charcoal, then removing which leaves a ‘ghost’ of the marks made. I then added more layers on top, gradually building the architectural details and qualities.
Some of the urban characters I submitted for the piece.
Made by combining pen and ink drawings with graphite. These were drawn onto translucent papers so they could be overlapped and layered to create a busy but transient feeling.
A couple of the characters from the video. This was really not my thing at all, i’ve never drawn characters like this, but it was Tori Amos you know, I really had to try!
My hippo and aardvark using charcoal and ink.
Some of the work and ideas didn’t make it to the final cut which was a shame as I think the original concept was brilliant (not mine!) I just provided the imagery, well most of it… (the Egyptian eyes and symbols, not sure where they came from but nothing to do with me!!)
Enjoy!