More faces - and some colour

A whole week has passed in which I have been very busy, but somehow I don't recall accomplishing anything :/. It suddenly struck me that I hadn't done any pictures for War in Gaul for a while, and my fingers got itchy... So here is a sketchdump with the results.

Here is a first glimpse of my Original Roman Character (*grin*), Quintus Tullius Veridicus. At this stage he is still worryingly much "a Roman" - that is, I know quite a few things about him, but not so much his looks, unfortunately. Amateurs of Roman names may notice that Veridicus has Etruscan ancestors: the Gens Tullia, so I discovered, has Etruscan roots, and the name "Quintus" is not the Latin for "fifth", but a Latinised form of the Etruscan name "Cuinte".

The reason why I am so keen on making this man Etruscan is because - well, there are several things. First off, the Etruscans made the Romans, but sort of disappeared inside them as well. I find that an interesting given. Second, the kings of pre-Republican Rome were Etruscans. They were so hated that they inspired fear of kingship in ancient Rome, and one reason why a civil war broke out between Caesar and Pompey is that many people feared that Caesar wished to turn Rome into a monarchy again. (They were right, of course, and le grand Jules ended up being stabbed to death by a bunch of Republicans.) I like to refer to this conflict between republicans and monarchists because what Vercingetorix tried to achieve in Gaul effectively mirrors Caesar's actions in Rome. I'm not sure yet how I am going to integrate this into the narrative, but at least the element will be there so that I can call upon it when it pleases me :-).

Finding a face for Veridicus is not so easy. I should like to have a look at the ancient paintings in Etruscan tombs, to see if I can snatch some stereotyped looks of the people depicted there... One problem I have is that the Romans don't seem to leave me a lot of scope in terms of hairstyle to help me distinguish between characters :/. I am at present in danger of producing a bunch of clones...

I have also been pondering Veridicus's cognomen. I don't know of any Romans called Veridicus. I gave him that name as a cognomen in the sense of a nickname that says something about the kind of person he is (in this case, "he who tells the truth", honest and outspoken), but in fact I doubt that the cognomen still functioned that way in the first century BC. It is rather likely that he would have a more standardised name, one that serves to specify the specific branch of the Tullia family from which he hails. Of course in the meantime I have become rather attached to the name of Veridicus, and I'd rather not change it. And I don't know how many people would fuss about it if I let it stand ;-).

I am still working on Rigantona. It is such a bother having to draw someone really pretty. I mean, I hate it when I read a comic where it is clear that a character is supposed to be gorgeous when they don't look at all gorgeous to me. Besides, it really annoys me when an artist can't draw beautiful women. So, well, I would rather not be guilty of those offenses myself XD.

It's a bit stupid - I used to be much better at drawing pretty girls than at drawing men. Then I tried to get better at drawing men, and now I am no longer happy with how my women look (and my men still look girly *g*). Blah.

Anyway - Riga is improving, I am glad to say, though there is still some work to be done. I guess I will be looking at photos of beautiful women for inspiration, and see where it takes me. I also need to go back to studying naked females. Something always seems to goes wrong with the ladies' boobs these days, and we can't have that, can we? Not that you should ever expect the trashy Lady in Skimpy Outfit from me, but I want to be able to do "alluring" when I need it :-). I'll post the results as soon as they look nice.

This is slightly more serious as a drawing :-). A few weeks ago now I thought I'd take out the enormous pencil set which Waterzooi gave me as a present this summer, and see where all those types of graphite would lead me. I was thinking of a picture I had done of Volca a while ago, and of the nice effect I got doing the texture of her skirt - I wanted to have a try with Comm and exercise my cross-hatching skills. It didn't work very well at first, but I continued to layer with ever darker pencils until the hood looked really nice (or so I think). What keeps escaping me is the shading of faces. I really didn't like what I got, and erased almost all of the work I did on the face. In the end I have a relatively realistic hood and beard, combined with my typical cartoony face. I'm not sure whether I am entirely happy with that.

What I do like is the fibula :-). If you click the picture and zoom, you'll get a better idea of what I mean: the hard pencils allowed me to achieve what for me is a rather good metal-y look *g*.

Seriouser and seriouser: the following is a quick sketch run riot :P. I was drawing spears in the booklet that I keep for copying historical artefacts, when something struck me about the designs I was drawing, and I ended up toying with a bit of plot. To make sure that I wouldn't forget it, I doodled a scene, and then thought I might as well refine the drawing, and everything got out of hand from there *g*.

Yes, yes, plenty is wrong with this, but please have mercy and don't tell me right now - you can offer concrit in a few days, when I am ready to accept enumerations of all the flaws. It will be obvious that I didn't use reference for anything except the spear and the Roman uniform, and then I didn't even check whether I gave Veridicus the clothes that befit an eques... I was enjoying myself too much to bother. Bad reflex, that ;-).

So, anyway: here are Veridicus (looking rather "standard Roman" - *sigh*) and Comm, in a picture entitled, Comm Commios and the Well-Ordered Mind. *giggles*
There is a story to go with it - though, story... It's horrible, but I will always drift from action into contemplation, it seems. I'm supposed to be working about the war in Gaul, so you'd expect plenty of action, but what do I get? "We interrupt the action for a Philosophical Interlude about the Difference between Roman and Celtic Mindsets." Go me. Alas, this is my idea of "fun" and "interesting stuff". Incidentally, this drawing has decided for me that Veridicus and Comm will meet - they weren't going to. I had invented Veridicus for another storyline. But Comm is the kind of character who wants to understand what makes Romans tick, and that means he needs a Roman willing to talk to him about such things. Caesar would seem too busy, Antonius too frivolous, Labienus too antagonistic - so I thought of Veridicus. I will have to find out which rank and function he needs to have in order to hang around Comm for a while and then move somewhere else when I want him to.

The drawing doesn't really work without a plot - it doesn't tell you by itself why Comm looks so startled, or what Veridicus is talking about. But I like it because I ended up making it very detailed in terms of costumes and such. In fact, when I was done with the pencils, I thought it might be worthwhile to try and colour the drawing, because it would provide a good picture of the complete look I hope to achieve. I'm not saying that it's now decided that everything will look like this - just that graphite and black/white feel incomplete for this project, and that I want to get an idea of what a coloured look can be like.

I didn't want to colour my pencils, because they were too small. I photocopied the drawing from my sketchbook onto heavy paper, enlarging it to twice the original size. The photocopier didn't like my paper, and its black dusty stuff stained and came off. The photocopy looked very grotty, which normally speaking I would hate, but somehow I took a fancy to all the dust and stains and decided to use it. The photocopy dust mixed with my coloured pencils, but I thought that made for a nice effect. I guess the result is my best pencil colouring job to date, and at this moment I am rather pleased with it ;-).

It was more obvious to me in the pencil version that Veridicus is looking at the tip of the spear, not at Comm - in the "inked" version he seems to be staring at a point between Comm's head and the spear tip. Too bad. At least I had fun with it, and Comm looks singularly handsome ;-).

(Please click for the larger version!)

Two exciting pictures!

...Okay, maybe they are not that exciting to you, but they certainly are to me :D!

Yesterday the comics expert and his dazzling Elfie came over for coffee and cake, and apart from a pile of yummy comics (Courtney Crumrin Tales! Scott Pilgrim! Castle Waiting! Wonderland!) he also brought me a picture. Actually, it was my own picture - but a friend of his (I don't even know his name! - Nout?! What's his name? Linkie to his blog? plz? thx!) had been playing around with it - and given it digital colouring.

I was astonished when I saw the result. My first thought was, "Wow, he's real! He's, like, not flat anymore!" :D I am really surprised to find that this realistic way of colouring is not at odds with my simple line art. It gives me an entirely new perspective of what the finished product could look like, and it sort of reassures me that my kind of linework does not automatically disqualify the art from getting a look that is perhaps more appropriate to the war story it is supposed to tell than my rather cutesy cartoon-like style might possibly be. Drawback is that I am not capable of achieving this kind of colouring myself, and as far as I understand, the Hitherto Anonymous Artist is not looking for a long-time War in Gaul engagement. (And, to be honest, long-time always means looooooooong-time if I am involved :/.)

As you can see in the next picture, I am still more comfortable with monochrome myself... This is watercolour paint on sketchbook paper that is actually a little too light for it :-). Anyway, if it is exciting, it is not so because it is particularly brilliant, but because it is my first picture of a War in Gaul character that is not a development sketch or a kind of study, but a pure picture picture that is not meant to be anything but pretty. It's a shy start, but it is a start none the less.

It is, as you can see, a totally spontaneous, unstudied speed painting, done for no better reason than that I had a leftover of paint in what I thought was a nice hue. I had added quite a lot (I think) of Gum Arabic to make it more transparent. You can't see it on the scan, but the real picture actually has a vaguely glittery quality to it because of the gum, and is rather appropriate for something supposed to look cold and snowy.

My confidence with and enjoyment of watercolour is slowly growing. The results are not great, but at least I am figuring out a thing or two. In this picture I had fun playing with water and the wonderful stains it can make. So yes, those stains are deliberate :P.

Holiday annoyance

I enjoyed my holiday. I really did. I went to Barcelona and saw plenty of Gaudí buildings, which I adore, and I learned several interesting and rather inspiring things about the architect's approach to his work as a science, craft and art. Needless to say, I came back home with a biography (I'm one third into it) and three books with pictures and analyses of his work (more pictures than analysis - I couldn't find anything more technical in a language that I read, unfortunately) - an introduction to his oeuvre and specific books on Casa Batlló and Park Güell. The trip reminded me of the fact that I would have loved to become an architect, a dream that I could not possibly realise because I am useless at maths. Gaudí, I am told, as a boy had low marks for just about everything except mathematics. Me, I managed to get a 2 out of 10 for maths in my second year at primary school -_-. I wonder whether my problems with perspective are related to my hopelessness with numbers and geometry, and the fact that I had to opt for a course of study that precluded any lessons in solid geometry...

Anyway: on to the annoyance. One of the things I don't like about going on holiday is the fact that travelling means that I don't get any drawing done. The worst of it is that I know for a fact that for many artists the opposite is true. They end up publishing their travel notebooks, and lo! they are full of wonderful sketches and watercolours of sights and people. My notebooks either come back as blank as they were when I packed them, or they contain a few rubbish scribbles. It is very frustrating. What is the reason behind this inability to make my trips pay off?

Off the top of my head, I can think of two things:

1. I am very slow in everything, including drawing. In order to draw, I have to be able to sit down quietly and work at my ease. I am so envious of people who capture a pose or a sight in mere minutes - apparently I haven't got the necessary skill to do so. Also, I rarely travel on my own. That means that whenever the fancy takes me to sketch something, I have to make my companion(s) wait for me, or to split up with them, both being arrangements for which said companions have so far never cared.
2. Apparently I need a lot of time to digest things. I am just not the impressionist type, not a person who finds inspiration on sight and is in her element when working in the open and on the move. When I see something that interests or impresses me, I take it in, mull it over, and sooner or later it will crop up in what is possibly a totally unrelated context. I will have an idea which I want to express, and somehow I will be reminded of something I have seen, probably research it, and use it.

I really think I should learn to study more in art. My modus operandi seems to be: this is what I want, now what do I need in order to get there? - and so I learn, but not methodically. That seems to be, at least partly, what gives me trouble now with War in Gaul: I suddenly discover that the project requires a whole vocabulary that I lack because I am not in the habit of starting at the beginning. And I have become so set in my habits that I find it hard to try and acquire some that more professional artists find quite natural and self-evident, such as sketching whatever comes into view, or immediately posing an interpretation/style upon sights or people that surround them.

Another thing I wondered about recently is reference. I very, very rarely work from a live model, or use a photo as reference for an entire pose. It seems that many professional artists use models or reference photos for almost everything. I only do so when I find something problematic, in the sense that I can't see its precise mechanics in my mind's eye. It seems very limiting to use reference for everything, because often enough I can't find exactly what I want when I look for it. Then again, it probably avoids many of the mistakes I make, and I would probably be able to draw anatomy, bodies in space, colour and perspective better if I were a bit more observant of outer rather than inner life.

Two colour thingies

I said I would be trying a few things with colour, and this picture of Rigantona is one of those experiments. I combined my usual inks (Staedtler pen) with colour pencilling. It's not bad, I think - I especially like the skin tones and the hair. The dress, however, looks rather paler than I had hoped, though I picked the brightest green in my box :/.

I am planning a more ambitious drawing of Comm and the black stallion with which he is gifted by Caesar - but seeing as the design involves a horse it may take some time ;-). In any case, that drawing would be on better (and whiter) paper, and I'm curious what the pencil colours will look like in those circumstances.

Rigantona's brother, Vercingetorix, in pastel pencils. (Click on the picture for a larger version...)

I think that strictly speaking I make these much too smooth; I use my felt tool thingy all the time, blurring just about every pencil stroke. I guess this is my way of attempting more or less realistic colouring :-). On the other hand, my insistence on graphite pencil lines and sharp contours seems a little contradictory. But I rather like this effect.

Oh - I mixed the purple of the cloak. Go me! More colour experiments are imminent, now that I have got myself a book on colour theory and mixing, yay! ;-)

A few sketches

Here are a few more attempts at getting a grip on my characters and familiarising myself with their features. I often fill in the characters' backgrounds and stories while doodling. In the case of War in Gaul, I still have a long way to go.

I haven't been able to do something decent with Comm's scar yet. Part of the problem seems to be (though it is perhaps not that obvious in these sketches) that most of the time the thing I draw just doesn't look like a scar. It looks like, well, two lines drawn onto his forehead, not the remnants of a grisly wound. I'm working on it :-).

I like this sketch of Comm very, very much. Well, he's looking rather more handsome than he is supposed to be, but that's what usually happens along the way *g*. I like the contrast between him and Ambiorix; I do hope I'll get it to work in the story too.







This thingy developed into a picture that is rather too complex for my limited skills to be ventured upon without thinking and/or looking for reference. (Yep, I know what that says about my artistic genius.) Anyway: it just happened, and if there are plenty of things wrong with it (proportions come to mind), that is a result of its improvised nature. But hey, I don't care, because it's only a sketch. It's (vercingeto)Rix and Riga(ntona), who have been clamouring for my attention lately.

It looks like I am returning to my simple, clean style - though it is possible that it might change again when I get round to drawing actual story pages. Unfortunately those still seem a long way off.

First glimpse of Caesar

Yesterday, out of the blue, I thought I would draw Caesar. Aside from a few very tentative sketches of Veridicus (my OC, from the Gens Tullia), that makes Caesar the first Roman who gets a face in my story. That, um, leaves only Labienus, Volusenus, Marcus Antonius, Sabinus, Cotta, Cicero and a few others...

The situation with Caesar is of course much different from that of my Gaulish characters: we know what he looked like, because we have portrait busts that can definitely be identified as representing him. I don't know about you, but even before I started working on this comic I was able to recognise Caesar's face when I came across it in museums; I'm sure I'm not alone in that. As a consequence, I feel that I can't just go inventing wildly when Caesar is concerned, and I copied his face from several portrait busts. The merits of my copying capacities are very relative, but I am nevertheless rather happy with the result - I don't think anyone could look at the pictures on the left here and say, "hey, isn't that Caligula?" or something. I am glad that the man has a few expressive lines in his face; they help me individualise him and make his expressions more lively too. I guess I am making his nose larger and more hooked than in the busts, but I like a little exaggeration; my style isn't that realistic.

I have found another portrait bust that shows a more fleshy Caesar. We mostly see him as lean and even somewhat ascetic-looking; I opted for that image because - well, after all, Vercingetorix's best moves against Caesar were those that cut off the food supply.

I do need to try more expressions as I sketch on; right now all the old bloke ever seems to do is smirk. But he has an excellent type of face for smirking, too... I already know I'm going to enjoy drawing Caesar. He is greedy and ambitious and totally immoral, if you ask me, but he's also brilliant as well as quirky. You just have to love a bloodthirsty general whose nickname was "the Queen of Bithynia", haven't you? Every time I have to draw his hair I am reminded of the fact that he was balding and hated it, and grew very long hair at the back of his head so that he could comb it to the front to make it look as if he did not have a bald patch on his scalp :D. Oh, and he depilated, which is great because I don't particularly like drawing hairy arms :-).

Here's to show that I shouldn't be allowed to play with Photoshop colours because I obviously don't know how to use them properly. I should do a decent version of the picture, perhaps in watercolour or something; this is just some quick sketchy thingy.

I have been thinking at which points my main characters interact with Caesar personally. There aren't that many. Comm must have met him most often, joining him on the British campaign. I suppose Vercingetorix must at least have been introduced to him. Ambiorix, I'm not sure. I think I do need to know, or determine for myself, whether or not Caesar knows what Ambiorix looks like. I wonder just how much of the business with local dignitaries Caesar conducted himself... If he delegated a lot, that would make him something of a ghostly figure in the Celts' imagination - the man who is behind everything, but who is at the same time unapproachable, a kind of nemesis more than a human being. That could be interesting for the story.

Styles...

I find it a little bit annoying that I haven't been able to settle on a style yet for this project. I haven't found one for Mademoiselle de Maupin either. It's not as if I haven't got anything more basic to do and learn than develop a style for these stories - I mean, writing a scenario would be a nice start ;-). But for some reason I like to know about the visual element too; it goes hand in hand with the story and atmosphere for me, and I am used to developing both at once. For my previous project things actually started with the style and developed from there. So I'm feeling a bit blah about my inability to settle on a particular visual approach. I did a few try-outs, but none of them feels right so far.

The first thing I tried was inking with Faber-Castell PITT pens (see image above). Compared to my earlier inking style, it is rather loose (I used a brush pen as well as a more ordinary one), with an attempt at slightly more realistic shadowing. I don't really know what to think of the result. I guess that for me it is not neat enough, but on the other hand I am not sure whether my usual preference for a more polished style is all that suitable to a story about a brutal war...

Despite my love of black and white illustration, I rarely use quill pen and ink, and have never ever attempted to ink with a brush. I can't control them very well, and only started to ink my drawings when I discovered Staedtler pens - teensy felt tip pens that don't run, don't stain, dry very quickly and produce really neat lines. With them I have about as much control over the linework as I am ever likely to get. The drawback is that they don't allow much variation in the lines in the way that quill pens or brushes do when you apply pressure or swirl them. Drawings done with Staedtler pens arguably lack in spontaneity, too - they are perhaps more static than pictures done with a quill or brush, or at least they are when I am drawing.

In this drawing of Catuvolcos and Ambiorix I thought I would give classic inking a try. It is done with quill, brush and waterproof Chinese ink. I suppose the result could have been worse, but I am not entirely happy with it. Once more it is not quite neat enough to my liking, though that may be because I am just not adept enough at using these tools. Also, I am wondering whether my lack of insight into realistic shadowing does not make this type of drawing look merely clumsy.

Another thing I tried was to combine graphite pencil linework with colour pencil. I am not yet comfortable using colour in a comic; up until now I have always worked in black and white. But the Celts were a colourful people, so much so that the Greeks and Romans felt obliged to report on the many and bright colours of their clothing. Not to use colour means not to counteract the drab costuming in so many films...

One problem I already have to face is that the scanner, for one, does not like my pencil colouring very much. Quite apart from my merits in using pencils, the subtleties just don't register in the scan :/. I am garantueed to have trouble if I should try to get art like this printed from scans. It just won't look the way it should, and it's not a mere matter of enhancing contrast in Photoshop - I tried that.

Apart from that, I don't suppose it is very practical to use only pencils and no inks. I need to try a combination of colour and inks and see where it takes me. I have no idea whether inks and colour pencils combine well... So far I have only ever tried inks with watercolour, but that requires special paper, which is not very practical either.

If I manage to sort my colouring problems out, I should very much like to adopt clear colour schemes for each main character. It would make them more recognisable, and say something about the character at the same time. For Ambiorix I want blue and gold, and royal purple for Vercingetorix. Rigantona, as a priestess, I would dress in vivid greens. Green is the colour of the supernatural and of nature; I should like to give my druids green clothes too, in order to avoid the cliché image of the white-clad bearded man who is in remarkably little evidence outside of Roman sources.

I'm not sure about Comm's colours yet. My very first plans involved lots of black for him, but I wonder whether that wouldn't be a little too unusual. I'm still considering it. Maybe a black cloak and a red tunic? Volca will probably end up in browns and reds - warm colours, but not too striking. She isn't supposed to be someone who likes to draw attention to herself, unlike Ambiorix, who is a bit of a showoff.

Anything watercolour-related takes a bit more preparation than anything you see in this post - I can't just try it out in my sketchbook, because for sketching I like a very smooth sort of paper, and watercolour simply doesn't catch on that. I will be posting painted colours for comparison, hopefully soon, and comments and advice are very welcome :-).

Costume - a few sketches

In a previous post I mentioned the problem of having to convey lots of information without taking too much recourse to text. One specific element I will be dealing with in War in Gaul is that the Gauls were divided into many different peoples; in fact we are not even sure that they called themselves Gauls or even Celts.

According to Caesar, the Belgae differed from the other continental Celts by their descent from Germanic peoples. There is quite some debate among historians as to whether the Belgae spoke a Celtic or a Germanic language. Unfortunately these discussions are often frought with politics. Those people who argue vigorously that the Belgae spoke a Germanic dialect are sometimes prone to using their theory in order to emphasise, say, the difference between the Flemish and the Walloons in Belgium; consequently I find it difficult to know whether I am reading propaganda or honest historical research. Moreover, in wishing to distinguish between 'Celtic' and 'Germanic', historians are pulling a Caesar: they force some kind of order and distinction on a culture that does not actually seem to have cared much about this kind of deliniations. The Celts did, however, make distinctions among themselves: they seem to have been forever picking fights with their equally Celtic neighbours. That appears to have been one problem the Romans solved...

I would like to keep 'my' Celts' ethnic identity fluid. It might be nice to go with the Germanic thing to some extent. For one thing, it would make my Eburones and other Belgae extra annoying in Caesar's eyes because they are impossible to categorise. As a bonus, it would give me the opportunity to throw in a few Germanic names, which are easier to come by than Celtic ones :P.

In terms of costumes, I was thinking that I might show the sliding differences between northern and southern peoples by the men's trousers. Apparently it is a typically Germanic thing to strap leather laces around the leg up to the knee; the Celts usually strapped their trousers at the ankles. So I'm going to play with straps, and with the width of the trouser legs - narrow in the south, wide in the north. Now Catuvolcos and Ambiorix look as if they are wearing a kind of ancient plus-fours :D...

Here is old Catuvolcos, leaning on his spear. I didn't give him a shirt; I wonder whether I should change that. As I said in a previous entry, I imagine him as an old-fashioned warrior king, so he has to look sort of hardy, even if he is getting on in age. Shirts are for sissies like Ambiorix ;-).

For some reason I like to picture Catuvolcos in a cloak with a fur collar - does that give him a heroic, royal air, or is it just me?

The armlets are ... Well, armlets are archeologically attested, but not exactly in high numbers. They are more of a pictorial tradition than anything else, but I like them, so my kings wear armlets. Let's say we haven't found many because Caesar confiscated them and melted them all into sestertii, all right? ;-)

Here is Ambiorix, in full regalia, or almost. I need to sort a few things out, like for example the way the cloak is worn; I am having a bit of trouble drawing cloaks properly, and I need to copy a few fibulae for inspiration too.

The basic clothing consists of trousers, a shirt, a tunic with belt, and a cloak. I am wondering whether I can make my Celts wear shirts that are open at the front - kind of like the modern versions but without the buttons. I have read a description from which I understand that they may have had such shirts, but I am not sure whether I interpreted the passage the right way :/.

Ambiorix wears his sword on his right, not because he is left-handed, but because the Celts just happened to wear their swords that way. Seeing how they loved to show off, I bet they did it because when you draw a long Celtic sword from your right with your right hand, you have to make a long, sweeping movement - quite impressive-looking, that *g*.

Here is Commios. He lives a bit more to the south, on the border between what Caesar calls Gallia Belgica and Gallia Celtica, so I gave him different trousers, shorter straps, and a tunic but no long-sleeved shirt. I guess the main reason why I am inclined to give him short sleeves is because I picture him as rather muscular and so I want to show his arms. Only, well, at the moment I am still learning about muscles, and so far his arms merely look beefy :P. To Be Fixed.

I am still playing around with costume ideas; as you can see this drawing is on the whole less well-defined than the previous two. My Eburones are taking shape more quickly than the rest, and I still draw a complete blank on the Romans. It's not really a problem; I will get there in time. As a character, Comm is shaping up nicely. He has a daughter now, and a lovely little plot that will take him to Ambiorix. I was rather relieved when that idea popped into my head, even though it means I have a new cast member... Her name is Dannumara, by the way - Mara for short.

I am still trying out for Volca - her face isn't quite stable yet, but at least I had a lot of fun with my graphite pencils :-). One important job is to invent nice hairdos for my Celtic ladies; the one with all the braids was a first try, and I think it could have looked worse. I need some more training though, and I am looking for reference material too, but so far I have not found a lot of useful photos.

I need to think the ladies' wardrobes through, too. It is not immediately obvious to me how I am going to bring variation to it in the way that I did with the men and their trousers. Sleeves? Girdles? Stoles? Necklines? I have to try a few things out. I also need to look into making peplos-like dresses more elegant. Maybe I should watch a few peplos films for inspiration?

Helmets

I am copying ancient artifacts in order to get a feel for the design side of the world of War in Gaul. If I am going to make a comic of this story rather than to tell it in novel form, as was my original plan, I have to exploit the visual side of things, and preferably remedy that which annoys me so terribly in most visual renditions of the Celts in comics and films: the almost total neglect of their concern for appearance. I have to try and do justice to their fine workmanship - the beautifully decorated weapons, the fine fabrics, the colours, the refined jewellery, the elaborate hairstyles. It's going to take a lot of exercise!

*****

The bronze helmet on the left was found in northern Italy; it dates back to the third century BC. The thingy on the top used to have a crest attached to it. All other helmets are from the first century BC, which is the epoch in which my story takes place. By that time, helmet-makers had apparently dispensed with crests and the smooth bowler hat-style was all the rage. The helmets of Roman legionaries were inspired on this type.

The large helmet with the bird decoration on the cheek pieces was found in former Yugoslavia. I'm very fond of it, and it's the only one for which I have found a definite owner in the story: on account of the bird, I'm giving it to Catuvolcos. Catu-volcos apparently translates as battle-falcon, and though the bird on the helmet is most obviously not a falcon, I think it sort of fitting :-).

A note on the medium:
I used graphite and colour pencil, and made the drawings in my brandnew Moleskine reporter notebook. The paper is very smooth and light, and I believe it is to this that I owe my pleasing results with the colour. I tend to be not very accomplished working with colour pencils, but on this paper they glide and blend so nicely; it makes the notebook a good buy :D.

---

Most of the time when you see Celts on the screen, they are dirty, with wild masses of hair and dressed in dark and/or drab colours (Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves), single bits of animal skin (the first Astérix film), or in the case of Keira Knightly in King Arthur, a few leather strings *g*. The costume designer on Vercingétorix (released elsewhere as Druids) could be heard to claim that Celtic clothing was ragged because these peoples were lazy and not strong on finishings. What a funny thing to say, when most of the few bits of Celtic fabric we have left are seams and pieces of embroidery. If real Celts had seen what the dear lady made of Vercingetorix, they'd have assumed him to be a beggar rather than a prince.

Many people seem to assume that because we are talking about the ancients, their notion of what was beautiful must be entirely different from ours - but surely they, too, distinguished between scruffy and neat, dirty and clean. They, too, preferred combed and shiny hair to a tangled mess; we have recovered quite a few combs and hair ornaments, bog women with complex plaited hairdos, and in Celtic literature it is a sign of hospitality and affection to comb and cut another person's hair. They, too, valued cleanliness; Caesar reports that the Celts washed every morning (he seems to find that worth remarking on), and they are the people who invented soap (something the Romans didn't use). Celtic women used make-up, and some sources claim that men depilated their body hair. There are classical authors who assert that Celtic men would get fined if they were overweight - but of course that may be one of the stories they told to show what freaky foreigners these Celts were :-).

While watching the BBC series Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome recently, I paid special attention to the fabrics of the costumes, and to my surprise, the Romans did not receive a much better treatment than the Celts tend to get, though they were allowed a little more colour. I saw Nero, and just about every other rich Roman aristocrat, dressed in rough, stiff fabrics that I wouldn't have expected to see worn by such lovers of luxury. Either the costume designer had a small budget and was forced to make do with cheap stuff, or I was meant to believe that the ancients were incapable of weaving finer fabrics than that. Now - I know that the Celts' small sheep, at any rate, were half-wild and their wool not very soft. But lo: in the salt mines of Salzburg were found several samples of Celtic woollen fabric, and they are beautifully woven and smooth! With my untrained eyes I can't distinguish them in any way from samples of modern fabrics. Now, if a Celtic miner could have clothes made of smooth stuff, I bet Nero could too :D. We have such a weird way of looking at the past... I am bound to conclude that all in all we seem to think very, very highly of our modern selves *g*.

So there, I feel that I should try and show an approximation of the visual opulence of the Celtic aristocracy. That means lots of bright colours, ornament, jewellery, and decorated props. I am not usually inclined to draw such detail, but the Celts do deserve it :-). The nice thing is that I found, when I started drawing these helmets, that I enjoyed myself; that surprised me, because normally I am not interested in drawing objects - I prefer people. As I copied them, the beauty of these helmets dawned on me as never before; the Celtic craftsmen had such an eye for detail and balance that it is a true joy to try and render them in pictures. I am not sure how feasible it will prove to be in the long run, because I am very slow and my usual style is not very elaborate, but I am certainly determined to do my best with the clothes, the attributes, the houses and so on.

I don't know about colour yet. On the one hand it seems necessary. On the other, I'm not good at colouring :/. I guess much will depend on how much I manage to learn about colour and techniques while preparing the project.

More character sketches...

One of the more problematic elements of War in Gaul for me is - you'll laugh - the fact that a host of characters will have to have facial hair. Commios is the most important of them. I am not used to drawing beards or moustaches, and I had to study reference photos; otherwise it looked as if the beard had been glued on :-).

You may have noticed that in the image I posted to go with his character description, Commios has a scar over his left eye, the result of an assassination attempt. I rather like how it looks, but I have to find another place for it nevertheless. It has been pointed out to me that Miller's Leonidas in 300 has a scar like that, and I also noticed that it makes Comm bear a striking likeness to King Arthur in Chauvel and Lereculey’s Arthur. I think I will make it come out of his hair, or something. It is less decorative, but I don't want him to look as if I copied him from someone else.

This is a page of particularly bad Rigantonas. The picture that went with her character description is much, much better, but it was done after these and I already had a better grip of the character. The difficulty with her is that she is supposed to be very attractive, which means I need to train on how to draw beautiful women. I don't feel as if I have been doing a particularly good job so far.

Finally, Volca. Since she is the newest addition to the cast, she is probably the one to change most often. Her character is developing nicely; I have a few recent sketches that I will post as soon as I get them scanned. Volca is the most ordinary of my characters, visually and story-wise, but I have grown rather fond of her.

War in Gaul: the cast (4)

It is an annoying fact, but despite my ardent feminism my creative work invariably tends to centre on male characters. In this particular case, Caesar isn’t helpful at all: De Bello Gallico doesn’t mention a single woman by name. That means that if I want female characters, I am forced to invent them all. This is a tricky business since elsewhere, too, Celtic women’s lives are much less documented than men’s, and in fiction this more than once gives rise to detestable Mary-Sueism and Marion Zimmer Bradleyism, both of which I am rather desperate to avoid. Celtic women seem to have had higher status than their Roman sisters, in that they could, among other things, inherit and be political leaders. But their rights remain a misty issue, and much though I would like to write them as men’s equals, I think that the more realistic thing is to guard against too much ancient girlpower. The famous Boudicca only gained power over her people because her husband Prasutagus died; and though Irish legends mention women like Scathach who train warriors for battle, there is no trace to be found of warrior women in the texts of ancient historians or archaeology – women were buried with mirrors and needles and such, not with weapons. I suppose it is possible to question whether the graves are identified as female on the basis of the gifts alone, but still: no hard evidence. Caesar certainly doesn’t seem to have negotiated with women, and war in Gaul was a man’s affair.

I’m doing my best, though :-). Just – I can’t say too much about the women’s plots, because you can’t find them anywhere and so, unlike the men’s storylines, they have the potential of holding surprises. I mean, not that the men’s stories won’t have any, but – you know what I mean, right? ^_^


4. Rigantona



Rigantona used to be called Brigantia (Briga for short), but I recently decided that as Vercingetorix’s sister, she should have a name with ‘queen’ in it. Rigantona is the same as the Welsh Rhiannon and means “great queen”. Briga/Rigantona long vied with Vercingetorix, then Commios, for the position of overall main character of the story. When I was still in the novel phase, my drafts alternated between her and Vercingetorix as the first person narrator. Then, when Commios entered the scene, she fell in love with him, much against her brother’s wishes. At this moment, she still functions as a link between Vercingetorix and the Belgic characters, but has receded a little in importance due to Ambiorix’s arrival. At this moment I do think I will let her end the story; I have cooked up a nice storyline for her involving … -no, I rather think I should keep that a surprise :P.

Rigantona is a female druid-in-training – yes, despite my reservations. I want her to be as closely involved in the war as can be, namely, as her brother’s advisor. That is a bit of a classic role for a woman, so I hope that brings some sort of balance to the fact that female druids are barely attested… I would like to use her unusual position to point at the differences between the Celtic peoples, and to show the influence of the proximity of Rome to the south of Gaul. Women are rather prominent in Irish literature and British politics, whereas they seem to have lost some privileges in the east. As Rigantona is the daughter of a conservative usurper who tried to reintroduce kingship to a republic, I thought her family might well have looked around to see how they could give her extra high status, and that they wouldn’t have been put off by the fact that a custom or notion they deemed useful was considered outdated. Britain was decidedly old-fashioned in the first century BC; British warriors still fought from chariots, for one thing, a practice that had become obsolete in Gaul; and as I mentioned when talking about Commios, coins were not yet in use there either. If the equal status of women has become history in Gaul, it might well survive in Britain for a while longer. So that is where Riga will be going. When she returns to her people, called back by her brother, you can bet that her exertion of authority will cause some of the gentlemen to grumble…


5. Volca



Volca is the most recent of all my characters, which means she still has the most room for development – she’s not entirely stable yet. In fact she has taken the place of several other female characters I had been considering for a larger part in the story; on Volca’s arrival, most of them have faded entirely. My original idea was to have a woman warrior; instead I have ended up with a young princess, which may not sound like an improvement (?), but I’m happy that she’s there. She’s nice. She is perhaps more conventional than Rigantona, but she represents another side of the story of the Gaulish war that deserves some attention too – that of the people who don’t take an active part in the battles and schemes, but get to bear the consequences of the actions of their kings. Volca’s plot will have little to do with politics (though there will be some) but rather play out on a personal level.

Volca is the daughter of Catuvolcos. I guess I invented her when I started thinking about the other characters’ households. Actually I don’t find it easy to estimate how large families were and how many people lived in one house. Should all my interior scenes be crowded with family and servants? How much privacy should people have? Nowadays in the West we tend to have rather a lot, because we live in very small units, but I suppose it was rare for people in ancient times to live alone. I still haven’t found answers to these questions. What I have done is given Catuvolcos a son and a daughter, Catutigirnios and Volca (as you can see, he isn’t very imaginative and has given his children bits of his own name – which isn’t nearly as bad as Comm’s family, which contains no less than three Comms *g*), and to Ambiorix four sisters, Avitoriga, Allicia, Abesa and Aia (with Ambiorix as the middle child). I’m afraid that so far, many mothers are dying in childbirth and fathers get killed defending their cattle and crops from raiders, because seriously, how on earth am I going to keep the cast in hand :/?

Because Volca is so new to my repertory, she is still undergoing changes. Basically she is supposed to look young – mid teens at the start of the story – and grow up to be … well, fine-looking but not stunning. I need to learn to draw a nice, complicated hairdo on her, though :-).

---

Romans. I haven’t even started on those yet. Caesar, Labienus, Volusenus, Mark Antony, Sabinus, Cotta and my very own Quintus Tullius Veridicus – here I come … one day … :D

War in Gaul: the cast (3)

3. Commios, king of the Atrebates, the Morines and the Menapians



Alas, poor Commios. He has been so utterly forgotten that I haven’t been able to find a single portrait of him, real or imaginary! No nation adopted him in the throes of Romanticism, even though he was a very clever strategist, and the king who held out longest of all against the Roman occupation.

Actually, in the case of Commios, it is not even clear what his name really is. He is one more victim of the near-incomprehensibility of Gallic today – for Commios, I’ve found “crow”, “equal”, and “he who strikes”… Quite apart from the meaning, what is Commios – his first name or his patronymic? The ending –ios could well indicate a genitive, which would make the nominative form “Comm”. There are coins of the British Atrebates inscribed “Comm Commios” – is that Comm, son of Comm, or is it lack of space that called for Commios, son of Commios to be a little bit compressed? Yay for dead languages, especially when they remain largely unwritten!

Comm or Commios (I think I’m settling for Comm Commios, just to keep things easy ;P) – one thing I know for certain is that he is the kind of character I like, because he changes his mind so often. Like Ambiorix and Vercingetorix, he hung around Caesar for a while; in his case, it lasted longer than for the other two. After the battle of the Sabis in 57 BC, where his people suffered severe losses, Comm seems to have stepped up to Caesar or in some other way made himself noticed, and Caesar appointed him king of the Atrebates; the Atrebates were henceforth also exempt from taxes. Comm saved the Roman general’s skin in Britain, and in return he got to rule the Morines, a neighbouring people of the Atrebates, as well. In 53 BC, Caesar pillaged the lands of the Menapians to put them under pressure not to shelter Ambiorix, and here too he put Comm in charge, whom he praises for his courage and cleverness.

However…

Also at this time, a fugitive Ambiorix is riding around Belgica, skirting Roman man-huntsmen and preaching rebellion to the Belgic leaders. And though Caesar remains tactfully silent on the subject, Aulus Hirtius reveals in his Book VIII of DBG that shortly after, Labienus has to send his right hand man Gaius Volusenus (“who hated Commius”) to undertake the Atrebate king’s assassination: Labienus has heard it rumoured that Commios has lapsed and is now conspiring against Rome. The attempt fails (though only just), and next time we hear of Commios, he is heading the army that must rescue Vercingetorix from Alesia.

Commios was one of the last leaders to take up arms against Rome, but he proved to be very tenacious once he had set his mind on rebellion. He never managed to mobilise a great army after Alesia, but what forces he had he used efficiently; Caesar notes that his troops are better organised than is usual in Gaul and that their attacks are well thought-out. But eventually the Atrebate king tires, too. He gets even with Volusenus, then offers peace to Mark Antony (yes, that Mark Antony) on the condition that he never has to face a Roman again.

One other thing I like about Commios is his resilience. When Caesar is done with Gaul, the land is little more than a graveyard. Commios has spent a lot of energy fighting, and he has lost. So what does he do? Instead of sulking in a corner, he crosses the Channel to Britain and starts a new dynasty there, eventually reigning over Berkshire, Hampshire, West Sussex, West Surrey and a part of Wiltshire. Archaeologists say that he introduced the practice of coinage there.

There is an attractive, but probably fictitious, anecdote about Commios’s sailing for Britain. Frontinus records that Caesar did not honour the agreement made by Mark Antony and decided to pursue Commios. When he arrived by the coast, the Atrebate king had already set sail, but the tide was low and his ship stranded on the flats. Commios had his wits about him and ordered the sails to be spread, and because the wind was fair, Caesar gave up the pursuit, thinking that the ship was afloat and had too much of a head start. Thus the traitor escaped…


A coin minted by Commios in Britain – it has his trademark “E” with the funny slant.

In the case of Commios, Caesar is even less specific than he was about Vercingetorix; we have not even the vaguest indication about his age. For some reason I have always imagined him as fortyish, maybe because I assume that his down-to-earth approach to leadership (his siding with Caesar was of great benefit to the Atrebates; he seems to have been more concerned with his people’s welfare than with glory) is an indication of sedate maturity as opposed to Ambiorix’s and Vercingetorix’s fiery radicalism. My idea of Commios (and Vercingetorix, actually) changed very little between 2003 and today, and I actually find that it plays out really well with my new version of Ambiorix. Those two will be close during the most crucial phase of the story, so it is important to have some interesting interaction between them. They are sufficiently different to provide contrast, whereas, if Frontinus’s story is any indication, their minds certainly meet when it comes to shrewdness.

Character sketches

*******
These are some of the first few sketches in which I am trying to establish the looks of Ambiorix and Vercingetorix. They will probably go through a few changes yet before they reach their definitive shape :-).

I haven't decided on a style yet, which is unusual for me. The visual approach tends to come first, but then this project is relatively young, and in the past year I have learnt a few things about drawing and comics that have made me a little less impetuous than I used to be. So I will continue developing, getting my hand in, and decide what kind of style is suitable when I have a better idea of what the story needs...

War in Gaul: the cast (2)

2. Vercingetorix, High King of All of Gaul (sort of)



Vercingetorix lives on in French history books as a noble freedom fighter. Was he that? Hm. No doubt he was very eager to have the Romans gone from his land, but one of his main motivations was that he wanted it all for himself. Actually he was a bit reactionary. His people, the Arverni, lived close to Rome and had a political system similar to the Republic’s: they had a senate, and each year they chose a supreme magistrate, the Vergobret, comparable to a Roman consul. Vercingetorix’s father Celtillos had attempted a coup d’état and proposed himself as king, but the Arverni revolted against that and burnt him at the stake as an enemy of the state. Vercingetorix thought he’d have another try, and he was evicted from the capital of Gergovia by his uncle Gobannitio, who was then Vergobret. In response, he rode around the land to gather an army of the people and took Gergovia by storm, overthrowing his uncle. It is not quite clear whether he was actually made king, but the Gallic leaders did appoint and confirm him as general of a huge army of the united Gaulish peoples. As such, Vercingetorix accomplished something extraordinary – he managed to bring almost all of Gaul together under his banner, and he was the only man to do so.

As an idea it was far from stupid: their divided state made the Gaulish peoples their own worst enemy. Caesar easily took advantage of the strife. But Vercingetorix had more brilliant notions: he knew just how to tackle Caesar. Like Ambiorix, he seems to have sucked up to Caesar for a while and gained the title of ‘friend of Rome’; in the meantime he figured out his enemy’s weaknesses. Vercingetorix thought that the only way to beat the legions was to starve them. His strategy was that of scorched earth – he told the Gauls to destroy their own lands so the Romans would find nothing there. He was very ruthless – he ordered the disobedient hung or mutilated – but his tactics did work. Vercingetorix vanquished the legions at Gergovia, and it hurt. However…

It’s hard being the general of an army made up of a heap of different tribes, each with their chieftains who want to seem important, and to have to give such unpopular orders as “Burn your town! I don’t care how pretty it is!” or “NO, for the millionth time, we’re NOT going to engage Caesar in an open battle, because we’re just not capable of holding our own in one!” And so, well, it didn’t last. His cavalry got carried away attacking the retreating Romans at one point, and Vercingetorix got holed up in Alesia and it was his turn to starve; Caesar put up a siege unmatched in the annals of military history for its brilliance, and eventually Vercingetorix had to surrender. Unlike most vanquished Gaulish leaders, Caesar didn’t have him executed on the spot; he sent Vercingetorix to Rome, where he languished in prison for five years, then he was displayed in Caesar’s great triumph and ritually strangled in the Tullianum.

I do wish Caesar had described Vercingetorix in great detail, but of course he didn’t. He merely says he was rich and powerful – and young. When I went surfing around the Net for more information about Vercingetorix, I noticed that some sites mentioned his age as thirty (not quoting any sources, of course), while others said he may have been as young as seventeen (not quoting any sources either). I thought I would check Caesar’s Latin text, to find out what word got translated as ‘young man’ in my edition. It turns out that Caesar calls Vercingetorix an adulescens, which according to my Latin dictionary is a young man “between the ages of 17 and 25, or 30”. Heh. It’s at once clear where the figures come from, and also what their source is :D.

Now, I do think seventeen is a bit young… Though, if people died much younger than they do nowadays, would they have grown up much sooner too? Was it as unheard-of to have a seventeen-year-old general as it seems now? I don’t know… I’m opting for early twenties as a kind of middle road. Again, I prefer him to be young so as to contrast him with his principal opponent – Caesar, who was nearing fifty at the time of the decisive battle for Gaul.

As for what Vercingetorix looked like, historians like to quote coins. One that is brought up is a Roman one minted around 48 BC, showing a gaunt man with a goatee and wild, battle-style peaked hair. The other one was minted by Vercingetorix himself and shows a totally different head:


Gold stater minted by Vercingetorix.

Do we get the before/after effect here? The Roman coin may be showing the Arvernian prince after his four-year stay in a Roman prison… Vercingetorix’s own coins, like just about all other Gaulish money, are based on gold staters from Macedonia. I do wonder whether the face on the coin is meant to resemble the king who minted it, or whether it is simply an imitation of a Greek head – it has the curls and general hairstyle of Alexander. But it is entirely possible that Vercingetorix should not have looked a lot like your typical Celtic ‘barbarian’ the way Napoleon III’s statue at Alise-Ste.-Reine has it. After all, his wealth most probably derived from trade with Rome; his land was very close to the Provincia, and his people had even adopted the Roman political system. Why would fashion not have dictated short hair and clean-shaven faces for Arvernian nobles, just like Roman fashion did?

I am always weary of having too much text in a comic, and feel that stories should not be burdened with too many explanations or treatises – that is what essays are for. However, a good history tale needs research, and finding a balance between tale and history is an art in itself. One step in this case will be to put as much information as possible in the visuals. So, whereas I originally conceived of Vercingetorix as having very long hair and a fringe of beard, I decided to give him a clean-shaven aspect and half-long hair instead, so that he holds the middle ground between Rome on the one hand and Gallia Comata (“long-haired Gaul”) on the other. Not that this will solve all my information-related quandaries, but it’s a start ;-).

War in Gaul: the cast (1)

You’d think that after having started and abandoned several megalomaniac comics projects, I’d have learned to keep things manageable by downsizing the scope and number of characters of the stories I start, but no. I’m incorrigible. Whether War in Gaul has a greater chance of ever going somewhere than my previous enterprises, I don’t know, but once again I’m starting big. If I want to present my story’s main characters to you, I have to tell you about no less than five people. …Yes, I know. But I may still change my mind ;P.

1. Ambiorix, king of the Eburones


I showed the cute blondie to my best friend last Friday and made her gasp – not because she thought he was pretty, but because I told her he is my version of Ambiorix. She had been expecting someone more along the lines of the Tongeren statue, I suppose. That is the image of the king of the Eburones as Belgians know it, having seen it on labels and boxes of the most expensive Belgian brand of shoes, or on beer bottles, or on signs of pubs, dry cleaning, car washes and goodness knows what else. Most people don’t question the funny hat, the fact that Ambiorix is standing on a very pre-Celtic dolmen, or the man’s dress code – would he be bare-chested in a pre-Inconvenient Truth climate? But this is the way in which he got fixed in the Belgian subconscious.

Caesar does not tell us anything specific about Ambiorix, such as how old he was or what he looked like. We are free to imagine him any way we like. When in 1866, Jules Bertin was commissioned to sculpt a statue of the Belgic chieftain for Tongeren, he chose a local blacksmith as a model; a hero should have some muscle, right? The Frenchmen Rocca and Mitton in their series Vae Victis make Ambiorix a grey-haired kind of patriarch. Neither of those visions is interesting to me.

The information that Caesar does give us about Ambiorix makes him an unconventional kind of king, at least for a Celt. Celtic kings tended to be men who had made a name on the battlefield. Like the Greeks who went for Troy, they were greatly interested in honour and glory. This was one of their weaknesses when they faced Caesar’s legions: they would insist on encountering the Romans in open battles, chasing glory by running headfirst into a shield wall, but they were invariably flattened by the order and tactic of a professional army. Ambiorix for his part does not seem to have cared about honour at all. What he wanted was to destroy the soldiers camping on his land, and he knew that could never be done in a ‘fair’ battle. He decided to cheat instead. With lies he coaxed one and a half legions into a trap and had some eight thousand men massacred. Dio Cassius says that he did not even join the fight himself – he just watched, and (this is something Caesar says too) made one of the Roman generals disarm with a promise of parley, only to have him killed in cold blood. Later, when Caesar exacts vengeance on Ambiorix’s people, the king himself goes on the run. He is hunted down by the Romans but never caught.

To me, Ambiorix doesn’t sound much like a classic hero or someone his fellow kings would have spontaneously looked up to. In order to pull off his deception, he would probably have had charm, a way with words, and the ability to lie well. (My main reason for making him so cute is that looking nice and a touch feminine would have helped him to convince the Romans of his innocence and trustworthiness.) For some time he was of service to Caesar and during that period figured out how to tackle the Romans. He must definitely have been perceptive, clever, and an agitator – while on the run for Caesar’s men, he toured the Belgic kingdoms spreading revolt – but too sneaky and self-preserving to be considered heroic and brave. Of course that is exactly how I like my characters, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Ambiorix wrestled his way to the fore of my story…

I find that for some reason, I always try to make my main character as young as possible, so that they face a crisis early in life and have to spend the rest of it dealing with the consequences of their choices. Ambiorix is no different – he got younger at every turn, and is at this moment in his late teens when Caesar invades Gallia Belgica (meaning he is about twenty when he tricks the Romans). That will make the Gallic War the thing that shapes him; I find that more interesting than looking at the effects on a mature adult, though I do have a mature main character as well. Another reason why I need Ambiorix to be young is the better to contrast him with his fellow king, Catuvolcos.



Caesar reports that Catuvolcos was ‘elderly’. What I should take this to mean in an age when the average man did not get older than forty, I am not entirely sure. I have opted for a Catuvolcos who is old but not ancient – a sixty-year-old already qualifies as a senex in Roman terms.

We know very little about the Gallic language as the Gauls did not have a written culture. Translation of names is therefore tricky, and I have found many different etymologies. “Ambiorix” has been explained as “rich king”, “king of the surroundings” and “king of the enclosure”. Whichever (if any) of these is right, they have one thing in common: Ambiorix doesn’t have a particularly martial name, unlike Vercingetorix (“great king of the warriors”), Cassivellaunos (“commander in battle”) or indeed Catuvolcos (“battle-falcon”, also interpreted as “hero”). Funny enough, the names do tie in nicely with my purpose, and they support the complimentary nature of the two Eburone kings. They give extra weight to my choice of presenting Catuvolcos as an old school warrior-king and Ambiorix as a young man whose prestige derives from his wealth and (family) ties – Caesar mentions him as having allies among the Menapians and peoples on the other side of the Rhine.

I guess ‘wealth’ is relative, and frustratingly, I don’t know just how relative. The Eburones lived too far to the north to enjoy close contacts with the Mediterranean, and in the days of Ambiorix, they did not have any trade centres on their domain. In those days, trade (in metal, salt, pottery…) was the main source of wealth; agriculture only yielded enough to provide for the tribe’s own needs. If Ambiorix was rich, I guess he must have possessed a lot of cattle – cows and horses. My historical atlas shows that horses were an important ‘product’ in that part of the country at the time. Moreover, the Eburones had a problem with raiders from across the Rhine who conducted cattle raids.

(The Celts did not have an economy based on money; instead they determined a person’s wealth by the number of cattle they possessed. To the Romans, however, that did not mean much, as the Celts’ horses, cows and pigs were significantly smaller than their own.)

When I say that I have difficulty figuring out the meaning of wealth, the reason is the following:
Caesar names as one of the reasons for the success of Ambiorix’s ruse the fact that the Romans found it hard to believe that a relatively powerless people like the Eburones would rise against them. He mentions the Eburones being clients of the Atuatukes, then of the Treveri – this means that they were not powerful enough to maintain their independence. Yet, based on archeological findings, they seem to have occupied a pretty large territory – and to have possessed a lot of gold. Several gold treasures have been found on Eburone territory, the most recent discovery being the Treasure of Heers. This depot consisted of a quantity of coins, seventy-four of which were minted by the Eburones around the time of their revolt against the legions. Gold staters were used to hire mercenaries, as they were much too valuable for daily use; they were only ever minted by kings or very high dignitaries out of their personal fortune. Archaeologists estimate that there must have been more than a million in all.

The television news at the time made this out to be Ambiorix’s fortune, but to me it seems a lot for a king from an ‘insignificant’ tribe. At the time of his revolt, Ambiorix was taking orders from the Treveres; it appears to my ignorant self that if he had a million gold coins, he would have been able to buy the Treveres :P. But maybe they had even more gold. If that was the case, it becomes easier to understand why Julius ‘I’m Oh So Deeply in Debt’ Caesar really, really couldn’t resist visiting Gaul, and how it was possible that he brought such a quantity of gold back from his conquest that the prices in Rome fell so spectacularly as to make gold temporarily cheaper than silver… Another possibility is that the journalist misunderstood – that the Eburones made more than a million coins in total between 75 BC and 50 BC, not that they were all minted by dear Ambiorix. It’s not quite clear though. A literal translation from an article in Het Belang van Limburg mentioning the same amount goes: ‘Experts suspect that once, more than a million Eburon staters were minted, of which – as far as we know – 160 have been found’. Still, even then it appears to me that for a ‘poor’ tribe, they had a lot of precious metal…


An Eburon gold stater.

Another thing that fascinates me is the fact that the Eburones had two kings. I haven’t heard of any other Celtic people with the same; this peculiarity is why some scholars suggest that maybe Ambiorix and Catuvolcos were magistrates rather than kings, just like the Romans had two consuls to avoid any one person becoming too powerful. But this seems rather unlikely to me as the Eburones lived in the north of Belgica and were more conservative than southern peoples; the Belgic tribes all had kings, unlike peoples like the Arvernians and the Haeduans who had a republic with magistrates chosen by a kind of parliament, their political system influenced by their Roman neighbours’. Caesar says that Ambiorix and Catuvolcos ruled one half of the Eburones each, but they seem to have acted and decided as one, and the situation still remains a bit puzzling. I am still working out how to deal with the matter, but I sort of like the idea of Catuvolcos having a say in Ambiorix’s appointment – he could ask for a co-king because he is getting old and ill, or because he feels that society is changing (which it was) and that he needs a different (more mercantile? More diplomatic?) approach to kingship than the old warrior ideal. Also, if Ambiorix is as young as I am casting him, Catuvolcos might feel he can easily influence and teach him. Maybe he does not get along with his own son, and prefers to train another young man for kingship…

First post...

"Mourning"

I bought four pastel pencils and some coloured pastel paper this week-end and set to work. This was the result. It reminds me vaguely of women's portraits of the Flemish Primitives, though unfortunately it lacks a fair few of the virtuoso qualities of the old masters ;-). Nevertheless I'm fairly pleased with it, and it is not at all bad as the start of a blog, I think... *g*