Ezra Cawson

I didn't really impart very much information about Blaidd yesterday, but then she's the main character and telling her story would entail telling the entire story of the story...

Suffice to say she grows up in this tented city in the South of England, spending her days in half-wild, half-militaristic marshalling of the city with her friends. Then, when she's fourteen, several factors conspire to remove her from home and friends, and she finds herself in central Europe in a situation she isn't remotely equipped to handle.

Later she falls in with the Shamans of Barcelona, and when I draw Blaidd as an adult or older teenager, its in their semi-uniform.


But never mind Blaidd for now; it's Ezra I'm posting pictures of. Blaidd meets her on the great, Europe-looping railway called the Crystal Way.

There she is. Except that's her when she's older - maybe 19. Ezra's teenaged brattisheness matures into fully-fledged self-absorbsion and a controlling tendency, but she's a good friend to some, and has a prodigious talent for her music. Her band, formed with her art-school friends, is at the vanguard of the new music emerging in Blaidd and Ezra's youths, and Ez becomes an icon of the youth movement of that time. She is the sort of person of whom students would have posters of on their walls for generations.

Physically my references for Ez are Keira Knightly and Louise Lomabrd (as she appeared in the BBC's The House of Eliott). Young, slim and boyish (except when she is being girly); as you might be able to tell from the above sketch there's a very 30s glamour about her, as well as the more obvious 60s influence. Someone I always bare in mind (though I don't really know much about the woman) is Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane. My other references are Pete Towshend (my personal hero, though god knows why), Noel Fielding (who is the modern face of 60s-style rock stardom) and Russell Brand (who demonstrates the lighter side of self-obsession).

^ Here she is with longer hair... and a white frock... hurrah. What else... she can't face anything more solid than black coffee before lunchtime; she changes her image frequently; she falls elaborately in love with people until they let her down by being human; she's a talented photographer, particularly of the figure (her hero, if she existed in Ezra's world, would be Lee Miller) but photography is a barely accepted art-form in her college so the tutors rather despair of her; her father lets her down in dramatic fashion early on, and while she is close to her mother (protective of her, even), she enjoys being part of Blaidd's all-embracing family.

Here's a good example of the mix of influences: Ezra's pose is copied from a shot of Grace Slick at Woodstock; she's purloined Townshend's boiler suit and grumpiness, and Skyla the charming-but-equally-self-absorbed singer is doing his best Roger Daltrey impersonation (actually, the physical references are equal parts Daltrey and Noel Fielding, again. So basically I've peopled my world with versions of Noel Fielding. Sounds like a nice world).