Chapter I

You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles.
Size: 36 × 24cm
The picture shows the convict Provis lifting Philip Pirrip - in short Pip, the main pro-
tagonist of Great Expectations - up on a tombstone and pressing him to bring him
something to eat and a file, with which he wants to get rid of the iron on his leg.

Before I commenced the big task of illustrating Great Expectations, I had already
illustrated the short stories The Portrait from Nikolai Gogol, Pique Dame from Pushkin
and Dreams in the Witch-House from H.P. Lovecraft. After I finished the latter I wasn’t
very happy with its final illustration. It was drawn with pencil and it was difficult to
figure out, what was depicted on it. So, after pondering a while, I decided to start the
task of illustrating Great Expectations, and this time completely ink every picture.

At the very beginning I had the idea of drawing every illustration in a kind of statuary and
immovable state. The scene has something similar to a tin-figurine. Both faces don’t
look much alive and the meticulous drawn vegetation reminds of a still life.
Pip’s face will change in the course of the illustrations and his height will vary signifi-
cantly, because I didn’t really know what to make out of him at the very beginning of
the story. See, Pip is a character that gets his personality through the encounters with
the figures in the book, while those figures themselves almost always have a predefined
character trait, that makes them almost to caricatures.