Alice and other darling scented rushes

Wool and Water from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll,
MacGibbon & Kee, 1972
Pen, brush and ink, poster white on paper

”So the boat was left to drift down the stream as it would, till it glided gently in among the waving rushes. And then the little sleeves were carefully rolled up, and the little arms were plunged in elbow-deep, to get hold of the rushes a good long way down before breaking them off – and for a while Alice forgot all about the Sheep and the knitting, as she bent over the side of the boat, with just the ends of her tangled hair dipping into the water – while the bright eyes she caught at one bunch after another of the darling scented rushes.” Hogarth ’65: Marriage à la Mode: Breakfast Scene
Private Eye, 30 April 1965
Pen and ink, poster white on paper

Hogarth ’65: Taste in High Life 2
Private Eye, 6 April 1965
Pen and Indian ink and collage on paper

Weekend at West Wittering
‘Our visual reporter captures the dramatic moment when our gallant men in blue leap into the room and apprehend the miscreants’.
Private Eye, 21 July 1967
Pen and ink, poster white on paper

On 12 February 1967 police raided a house-party at Redlands, Keith Richard’s manor hourse at West Wittering, near Chichester, on a tip-off from the News of the World. The police took away some Ambre Solaire suntan lotion, a quantity of Earl Grey tea, joss sticks and a minute amount of cannabis resin. […] Also present at Steadman’s soirée is Jagger’s girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull (the girl in the fur rug). George Harrison and Pattie Boyd can be spied in the mirror: the West Sussex constabulary discreetly waited for the Beatle to leave before they pounced.

Breaking Bad: Walter White
2015
Ink and acrylic on paper

The multi-award-winning, darkly comic TV drama ran on AMC for six seasons from 2008 to 2013. In 2014, Steadman was asked to create images of six main characters for the covers of limited-edition Blu-ray Steelbooks. […] Steadman says of Walt and the other characters, ”I printed out photographs of them and then watched all the series and some of it stayed in my head. Walt has a certain look to him. I realized that you can draw the top of his head with a compass. It’s perfect… Walt says he’s only doing it for his family, but one thing leads to another and he gets deeper and deeper and there’s no going back”.

It’s a Free Country (detail)
Private Eye No. 30, 18 February 1963
Pen and ink on pieces of paper

Bureau of Missing Persons
Rough drawing for cartoon published in Punch, 24 August 1960.
Pen and ink and blue pencil on paper

From A Retrospective: Ralph Steadman exhibition, held at The Society of Illustrators, September-October 2016

September 24th, 2016