eggpunk drew a wonderful unicorn today and it made me think of this passage from The Last Unicorn. This paragraph haunts me from time to time because it’s such a beautiful description of a character, one that I feel is often fully ignored by illustrators of the story. As much as I have nostalgic love for the animated adaptation, the Unicorn in that version is basically a horse with a horn—in direct defiance of the original text. I’ve never been satisfied with an illustration of the Unicorn who becomes Lady Amalthea. A big part of that might be that the description, like the character herself, is mercurial and otherworldly. Here are some quick explorations I did. There will probably be more in the future.
My family is in town this weekend, and we are all going to see the theatrical tour of The Last Unicorn, where Peter S. Beagle will be present! I met him briefly at Comic Con this past year but I didn’t have the book with me. This time I will be able to get his signature on my well-worn copy.
I also want to give him a drawing but I don’t know what it will look like or what it will be… or how I can presume to do that when there is already an entire animated film.