Sarah Omonoyan
Ms. Langzik
AVI 101
Friday, May 8, 2015

Diptych Line Project (Scraper Board): Purple Emperor

For the literary passage of this project, I chose a significant part of the book The Hobbit written by J.R.R Tolkien:

The sun was shining brilliantly, and it was a long while before he could bear it. When he could, he saw all round him a sea of dark green, ruffled here and there by the breeze; and there were everywhere hundreds of butterflies. I expect they were a kind of 'purple emperor,' a butterfly that loves the tops of oak-woods, but these were not purple at all; they were a dark velvety black without any markings to be seen. He (Bilbo Baggins) looked at the 'black emperors' for a long time, and enjoyed the feel of the breeze in his hair and on his face. (J.R.R Tolkien, The Hobbit, 1937)

I would have preferred to do the whole book, although conversely I know I could not simply incorporate everything into two panels. On the other hand for this assignment, I wanted to solely focus on these five words “a kind of 'purple emperor.” Prior to this assignment, I did some research on this butterfly only to find out that it does not exist, in spite of this I was inspired to do my own rendition (hence why I coloured the panels a light violet—with added pink). I wanted put the image through Bilbo Baggins point of view. As I stated beforehand, this passage holds the most significant part of whole book; it is the major turning point of the story and very spiritual moment for Bilbo Baggins where he has a moment of serendipity before finding his inner “Took” (adventurous) side. The Butterfly symbolizes the transformation, the thin lines represents all of Bilbo Baggins’ worries, insecurities and problems. While the thick lines represent each path he crossed and the patches represent all the risks he taken. Cross-hatching represents the “bridges” he built; the semi-circles represent the mountains he climbed, the circles represent Bilbo Baggins’ rounded