Niggle – Graeme Skinner

Rider in the storm

Graeme Skinner — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 14:52:37 +0000

I’ve intended for some time to paint Niggle as he rides through the storm to find a doctor for his neighbour, it has always been a large oil painting in my head, but before I start I thought I should try and get my ideas together on the computer

For those that are yet to read the book, shame on you it’s worth a read…

παράφρασις

Graeme Skinner — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 19:36:28 +0000

Last month I started on a painting of Niggle working away, it was for the theme of the month over at John Howe’s website. The theme was ‘The Bestest Book Ever – Imagine this is your dream commission, the book you’ve ALWAYS wanted to do a cover for.‘ So an illustration of Niggle was an obvious one for me to attempt. Sadly it was overtaken by real life events and I could not fit in any spare time to splash paint around, the month was gone all to quickly and the new theme was ‘The Real You – Self-portrait month. this is your chance to paint the inner you, or the outer you, as the case may be. Or to assume the psersona of your dreams.‘ The Niggle illustration seemed to fit the new theme perfectly, after all according to Tolkien “Niggle was a painter. Not a very successful one, partly because he had many other things to do. Most of these things he thought were a nuisance; but he did them fairly well, when he could not get out of them: which (in his opinion) was far too often.” I’d already posed up the ladder as Niggle, and the board was roughly marked up, so I just had to slap a little paint around

Niggle 1

Graeme Skinner — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 08:21:02 +0000

Right I have read “Leaf by Niggle” again, and I’ve come up with a rough list of pieces to try and illustrate. However, I’ll probably change my mind and illustrate some completely different pieces. So here is the rough list…..

Cover – Niggle painting a leaf (shock horror), or number 16 – burnt leaf, I could likely spend more time on design ideas than illustration.

1. Niggle and Parish’s Houses in the country.

2. Niggle in his shed.

3. Parish & Niggle talking – prior to bike ride (sketch)

4. Niggle on bike

5. The inspector and driver

6. On the train. (sketch)

7. In the ward

8. Breaking Rocks (sketch)

9. Niggle lying listening to ‘the voices’

10. Niggle and Guard

11. Niggle’s bike with label (sketch)

12. Seeing the tree

13. Niggle and Parish working by the tree

14. Walking together (sketch)

15. Niggle goes on

16. Burnt piece of canvas

17. Final sketch of the sign (Niggle’s Parish).

Okay, so there are probably more than is needed for such a short story but hey, I’m an amateur

Now all I have to do is get together some reference pics then start sketching – working out what Niggle looks like is proving to be a problem, but something will come along…..