Tenniel Quotes & Sayings

Well, I get my subject on Wednesday night; I think it out carefully on Thursday, and make my rough sketch; on Friday morning I begin, and stick to it all day, with my nose well down on the block. — John Tenniel

I carry out my work thus: I never use models or nature for the figure, drapery or anything else. — John Tenniel

It is a curious fact that with Through the Looking-Glass the faculty of making book illustrations departed from me ... I have done nothing in that direction since. — John Tenniel

A wasp in a wig is altogether beyond the appliances of art. — John Tenniel

By means of tracing-paper I transfer my design to the wood and draw on that. — John Tenniel

As a child, I copied Tenniel's illustrations from 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' obsessively, particularly his drawing of the white rabbit in waistcoat and frockcoat, umbrella tucked under one arm and a fob watch in paw, a look of suppressed panic in his eye. — Chris Riddell

If you could meet any character from literature, who would it be?

I would not want characters to come to my world. They'd lose their special qualities, the perfect amount of what I should know about them. On the other hand, I could go to theirs because they would not have any preconceptions of who I was. I'd like to hang out with the Cheshire cat, learn how to disappear, and speak in smart illogic. He would look exactly like his pen-and-ink illustration by Tenniel. I'd be rendered in pen and ink, too. That would be required for entering a pen-and-ink world with its particular dimensional strangeness. — Amy Tan