Week 3: I Didn’t Think Michael Fassbender Was Hot At First But I Kinda See It Now
March 24, 2023
Welcome back to another week of illustrating Jane Eyre! As promised, today I have character designs for all the major characters to show you. I’m going to go through each character, explaining their personality/appearance traits and how I went about designing them.
Our Heroine, Jane
Jane has some serious insecurities about her appearance. She describes herself to be “poor, obscure, plain, and little” (Brontë, 386). Essentially, she is scrawny, short, and unremarkable in appearance — which isn’t much to go off, but I made do. Since she’s quite thin, I emphasized the angularity and slightly jarring features of her face. Here’s what I came up with:
(Can I just say I’ve literally never drawn a child before so I’m pretty happy with my first attempt)
In my design, I sought to make her attractive in a somewhat unconventional way. And GOD, I had a hard time with that. Just look at how many different faces I tried for her.
The First Love Interest
Last year, I watched the 2011 Jane Eyre movie adaptation in my AP Literature class. I remember my teacher commenting on how Michael Fassbender was too attractive to play Rochester in the movie, and I was baffled — because I didn’t think he was hot at all.
Fassbender as Rochester in the 2011 adaption of “Jane Eyre” [2]
Fast forward to last week, when I needed to illustrate Rochester. To get inspiration, I checked out Rochester actors from the many movie adaptions of Jane Eyre. And let me just say, after seeing how old and musty the other Rochesters were, Michael Fassbender looked like the absolute epitome of vitality and vigor. So no, I still don’t think he’s hot, but now I can somewhat appreciate what my teacher was saying.
Rochester is described as looking stern and grim, with thick eyebrows, big nostrils, a square forehead, and deep eyes. Keeping those in mind, I drew him like this:
A quick thank you to Claire for suggesting the crooked nose : )
The Second Love Interest (and also Jane’s cousin . . . )
St. John is a clergyman who serves as a foil to Rochester. Rochester is emotional, capricious, ugly, and follows his heart. St. John, on the other hand, is emotionally repressed, cold, uptight, smoking hot, and doesn’t follow his heart.
Physically, he looks like a Greek statue: blonde hair, blue eyes, straight nose. Based on that description, this is what I drew:
I wanted his appearance to contrast Rochester’s as well. Here’s a quick table comparing some of their qualities:
Rochester | St. John | |
Face | Square | Tapered |
Eyes | Droopy, thin | Sharp, angled inwards |
Hair | Fluffy and soft | Short and roughly cut |
Thank you Mr. Bucci for giving suggestions and helping me revise my character drawings!
That’s all I have for this blog. Next week is my last week of preparation before I begin actually creating my set of illustrations, so I’ll see you then with more updates!
Sources & References:
- Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Signet Classics, 1962.
- Jane Eyre. Directed By Cary Fukunaga, Focus Features, 2011.