For my Unessay, I decided to do some painting. In the beginning, I wasn’t sure what medium I was going to use for this project as I had watercolors, acrylics, and I had a program on my computer that wasn’t just Paint. I decided to use the program since I could draw in layers and be able to erase any mistakes that I did as they were inevitable. I chose four scenes from Bisclavret which I thought were the more important or they stood out the most: the betrayal of the Lady, the begging of Bisclavret, the removal of Lady’s nose, and the kissing/embracing scene between the King and the Baron. I tried to add at least a few tiny details that would help properly portray the scenes and people, such as the church in the forest, the rose in the knight’s hand, and the knife in the Lady’s hand. The rose to represent how he kept trying to court her despite her being married and the knife to represent the backstabbing she did when she told the knight to take the Baron’s clothes.
While working in layers, save for the first picture, I sketched out on one layer the people I was drawing before coloring them in on another layer. I sketched out the people and had colored her dress in on the same layer before I realized that I hadn’t switched layers. It was too late by that point to undo everything and redo them all on another layer, but I made sure to do it correctly for the other three photos. I got to learn a few new tricks while doing this such as the shadowing in the fireplace and the candlelight in the third picture which is mainly just a change in the opacity.
I didn’t really give faces to the people and pretty much gave mittens to them because I can’t draw those. On paper I can very nicely sketch out an eye and eyebrow, but any other facial feature is a lost cause and I just cannot draw hands or feet in the slightest. To try and keep my people from being too one dimensional, I added some shadowing to the necks where the head creates shadow by just selecting a slightly darker shade. I also added a little bit of shadowing to the arms in the last image where they embrace.
As per a suggestion by Helms, I made sure to use the same clothing choice for Bisclavret in the first and second image. It sounded like he wanted the clothes to be in Lady’s hands already but I chose to just add the abandoned church in the background behind the trees, where it is barely visible, because that is where Bisclavret said he hid his clothes.
On all of my color choices, all I have to say is I just chose at random what the main color of an outfit or cloth was going to be. On the clothing, I googled medieval king, dress, and baron outfits and tried to recreate a photo each that I liked. I did the same for the bedroom. I went slightly insane during the moments where I had to draw out each stone in the walls and the floors which is why none of them are the same size and get drastically bigger the longer I spent making them.
Why does literature matter? I’m not sure how to answer this question. Literature matters because it carries ideas and themes throughout the ages. My project carries off a few of the ideas that Bisclavret put forth. Messages of times past are present in nearly all works of literature. We learn about the past and what they considered the most important qualities of the time in most of the works that we’ve found and continued to circulate.
Sprockets and Springes 
I think it’s very clever to put a poem, such as Bisclavret, in just four photographs. Especially because I can barely imagine trying to put it in four pictures myself, because there’s so much to this story and poem! I would LOVE to see you do this for Beowulf, but I feel as though it may be just slightly difficult because of the sheer size of that epic poem and density that goes along with it. I also appreciate art in general, so it’s refreshing to see multiple unessays, including yours, that involves some element of art. Just like any stories or art, a story is sometimes easy to tell, but sometimes not so much. For this project, however, I think you did well. I can understand what is happening, even though I did read the poem, I can see the elements you used and understand them more so than I might have without these images.
I also liked how you used italics, because sometimes posts become stale with the same text over and over again and I think the italics helped this post even more – even though it would’ve been okay with or without different formatting! Nicely done on this.
I think this is an amazing idea and it is so simple but does the job very well. I think the four scenes you decided to draw were perfect, I think those are the most important scenes in the story. I also liked how on the pictures you put a title on them, which I thought was very good idea, as it shows what was going on/purpose of the scene. I think the pictures do a great job for someone who learns better by seeing rather than hearing. I think this could be very beneficial for teaching people this story because sometimes the language in the writing can be very hard to understand, so pictures could do a much better job on explaining what is going on. Overall I thought this was very good, and was perfect for better understanding the story.