Why I drew them this way

On Thursday I gave a bunch of presentations and a comics workshop for students at Melbourne High School, a state school for boys which selects its students on the basis of academic ability. The workshop in particular was great fun - the students were enthusiastic, engaged and willing to have a go - and they came up with some terrific, original and very accomplished stuff.

A couple of the guys were drawing really impressive architectural backgrounds with wonderful fluency. I find architecture very challenging. It is something that I had never attempted before The Great Gatsby, and therefore something I had to consciously work at learning. When I commented on this, the archi-talented student seemed surprised. He said that backgrounds and buildings came very naturally for him, but that he found facial expressions very hard.

I have always taken for granted the fun and ease of creating lively, emotionally resonant facial expressions and the characters that use them. So I wonder what sort of "learning" is involved if you want to become more fluent in this aspect of creating characters. To a very large extent I think it is intuitive - which is not to say that such intuition can't be developed and improved.

Probably the most important thing, if I try to analyse my own scribbling experience, is learning to fully inhabit your character. By really exploring and getting to know the creature you're drawing, you have a sense of how they move, how their face expresses emotion, how a twist of an eyebrow conveys a particular attitude and so on. And when the pen is in my hand, I find that I also inhabit the character physically: my face will always take on precisely the expression that I'm trying to draw. Lots of other illustrators have told me that they do exactly the same thing.

In The Great Gatsby, I've taken the expression idea one step further, and tried to make each character's entire physical form embody the complex personality bestowed on him or her by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Just before the book came out, my wonderful publisher at Allen & Unwin suggested that it would be a good idea if I also wrote a few lines on each character to explain why I drew them this way. It was an interesting exercise, trying to concisely summarise the long, complicated, delicate and largely intuitive process of interpreting Fitzgerald's written characters in visual form. The one I find most difficult to summarise in words is Daisy. Daisy is my favourite character. She took a lot of thought and preparation and experimentation, but once I got her as I wanted her, I really do believe I got her just right.

It is hard for me to explain in words why Daisy looks as she does, but happily enough there is another picture that can help - and it's at the top of this post. About three years into the project, when I'd already finished a large slab of the book, my mum sent me a newspaper article which included a photograph of Fitzgerald's first love, the gorgeous debutante Ginevra King. It is said that Ginevra appeared in almost all of Fitzgerald's beautiful, unattainable female characters, and particularly in Daisy Buchanan. When I saw the photograph, I was overjoyed. Ginevra King, a woman deep in Fitzgerald's mind and heart, bore an uncanny resemblance to my version of Daisy.

And, for those who are interested, here are the very brief explanations that I wrote for Allen & Unwin.

Daisy Buchanan: Daisy is a complex character: charming, careless, morally compromised - and disappointed. Her feather-light flightiness and air of luxury are conveyed by her white, fluffy round head, while her slender, elegant neck and hands suggest both seductive charm and vulnerability.

Tom Buchanan: Everything about Tom’s personality is overbearing, arrogant and brutal, as embodied in his big, hulking, hyper-masculine body and brutish face. He occupies more space than anyone else, suggesting substantial social and financial power.

Nick Carraway: Our narrator is a gentle, somewhat ambivalent person, so I picture him as a smaller, soft-bodied creature. Nick’s expressive feelers give form to his sensitive ‘moral antennae’ which, although finely tuned, are also susceptible to swaying.

Jordan Baker: Cool, slippery and not to be trusted – Jordan is a slim, haughty squid-like creature, difficult to pin down and emotionally absent.

Myrtle Wilson: Poor Myrtle Wilson is all vulgar, overripe sex and loud, ugly pretension. She is unsophisticated and inelegant, but oozing sensuality: one big eye, an indiscreetly wide mouth, and enormous, multi-teated breasts. A bad end is almost inevitable…

George Wilson: Myrtle’s downtrodden, cuckolded husband is a nervous, sickly-looking, hand-wringing creature. But his tail looks a little like a scorpion’s, foreshadowing the violent consequences when George is pushed to the limit.

Jay Gatsby: Gatsby is a self-made enigma, a mystery deepened by its contradictions. He is simultaneously heartbreakingly sincere and utterly fake, noble and corrupt, glamorous and gauche. His form is inspired by the seahorse – a gorgeous, impossible-looking animal that seems to have been put together from bits of other creatures.