Arrest of Quasimodo. Original drawing by Irina Sumanenkova (2010) Drawing by Irina Sumanenkova

This is an original handmade drawing
Media: sketch marker to hatch all shadows and steel calligraphic pen and white ink to depict the light spots on a tinted paper.
Dimensions: 53 x 35.5 cm.
Dimensions in a frame+mat+glass: 72 x 53 cm.

My favorite technique for black and white works is a sketch marker, I use 0.05 mm and 0.1 mm in diameter only. This marker draws by pigment ink with alcohol, that`s why it dries almost immediatly.

About working process:

After the idea came, I begin to collect the information, depending on an era and country I need to depict. That means not only architecture, costumes and armor of that chosen time, but also faces for my characters. Because the type of French knight face of XV st. differ from the English one, German or Flanders of the same era. I search for the faces types in manusripts XV st., miniatures and paintings come down to us. Then I chose elements for a composition and drawing construction stage begins on paper. My academy drawing education helps me to create human figures for my ideas. Anatomy academic drawing I have learned in University from a Gottfried Bammes anatomy book. In order to portray a facial expression or a movement in a most natural way, I use photographs sometimes, but oftenly it comes from the imagination. I can draw a figure or head in any angle need. When the figures drawing is finished, I add clothes on them, every fold should be on it`s right place and characterize the type of textile. Historical costumes and armor depended on the era and country (in this case, 1482, France) and on the estate each character belongs to.

When the figures drawing is complete, I continue work with surroundings. The photogragh of architecture oftenly distorts the perspective and verticals. So, for my work, every building needs to be recreated anew, based on the photograph.

Next stage is shadow casting, depending on the light source from a photograph. It should help me to highlight my main characters. Sometimes shadows can create an unexpected effect need. The finished construction drawing now is ready to be carried on a tinted paper to hachure my drawing with marker and ink.

The hatching process is the most laborious, because my finished work looks like lithography, only it was made by hand directly on paper. Moving the line along, I have to keep in mind what I am hatching now: a face, a hand, a hair, an architecture, a type of textile (light or heavy fabric), is it a clothes on a figure or just a drapery, a metal armor, a ground, a stone or a sky - in order to depict any surface most naturally. That`s why I save the construction lines of all the objects after carring the drawing on a tinted paper to hatch. After the personages are finished, I can go on with surroundings, following up that every single line helps me to highlight the main characters and sculpt the another surface at the same time. That`s why the sky came in the last turn - it`s role not to interfere in composition most of the time, it`s just express the mood.

The light spots were hatched by calligraphic pen and white ink. The difficulty is that ink is in a little mason jar and every second it can be overturned unintentionally. And in the hatching process I have to dip the pen into ink every few seconds, because it can`t keep very much quantity of ink for longer working time - it`s too small. If the pen will be bigger, then it`s diameter will be bigger, and I wouldn`t be able to hatch a touchiness.

That`s why 3 square centimeters take 2 hours.

The main difference between this technique and oil painting is that here I don`t have much opportunity to correct, if something went wrong. Everything should be executed from the first time. It can be only lighten or darken a little in a small spots, that`s all. This is the last stage - to conform the whole work, to harmonize everything in it.

About idea:

This artwork is based on the novel “Notre-Dame-de-Paris” by Victor Hugo. The ivy is the symbol of the death, (the ancient Greeks have planted it on graves) is pointing to the grate near the ground, but, maybe, it’s the grating of a prison, which later they will get into. The tower of Saint-Germain-de-Pres on background – is the symbol of the spiritual perfection and, at the same time, of the loneliness, because a man, who live in a tower, is between heaven and ground, - he is already not belong to those, living on earth, but not reach the heaven wisdom yet. The night watch how the masters of life surround them, they are stymied, and there is no way out for them – all what should to be happen, came already.

Everything is against them – people, earth and architecture, they are the outcasts of the nature and society, and only the sky empathize with them.

The church Saint-Germain-de-Pres attests to the particular scene of action, Paris, and as the writer describes this scene far away from the centre of the city, and I can’t, even for the symbolism, depict Notre-Dame-de-Paris on background.

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Related themes

Irina SumanenkovaVictor HugoNotre-Dame-De-ParisNovelIllustration