Unicorns - charcoal study No.2

Unicorn Study

Charcoal on grey paper from vintage photo album
16 x 21.5 cm

"There. There they are. They are mine! They belong to me! The Red Bull gathered them for me one by one, and I bade him drive each one into the sea. Now they live there. And every tide carries them within an easy step of the land, but they dare not come out of the water. They are afraid of the Red Bull." -- King Haggard, The Last Unicorn

This is where my lore started. This 80's animated film, featuring the voices of Christopher Lee, Alan Arkin, Angela Lansbury, Mia Farrow and Jeff Bridges, both enchanted and haunted me! It made my little eight-year-old heart hurt when the unicorns were captured by greedy humans... and made my heart swell when love and magic won out in the end. It left my childhood self ever searching for white mares and hoping they were unicorns. I can't make it past the opening song without crying... that first moment America starts to harmonize, that's it, the waterworks start! 

I enjoyed drawing studies in charcoal of the movie before I started painting... and I have to say, even as a child Molly Grue's character had me in tears when she saw the unicorn as a mature woman. Watching it myself, a similar age to her and having never seen a unicorn... it was poignant and I was blubbering! 

"Where were you when I was new? When I was one of those innocent young maidens you always come to? How dare you? How dare you come to me now... when I am this?" --Molly Grue