Perelandra sketches

I thought I'd just do one more post to get all my Space Trilogy stuff out there. Here are a couple of quick sketches I did based on Perelandra, the second book of the series, where the protagonist is taken to Venus. I drew these as a sort of speculative concept art for a movie that will never be made. I do a lot of drawing of this sort.

Perelandra is a world almost completely covered in water. It's full of diverse animalia, which either live in the sea or on huge floating islands. These islands are like big carpets of moss that roll along on the waves, but they carry whole biomes of plains and forests.

 

My challenge here? Nudity. Perelandra is an Edenic world, untouched by original sin, and the inhabitants dress accordingly. This is all well and good in a book, but a completely accurate film adaptation would either have to make use of a lot of very creative close ups (ruining it), or have a strict R-rating. Thus, I did something I almost never let myself do and strayed from the source material. I immediately rejected the idea of puling a John Carter and giving the characters Avatar-style "loincloths and shell bras." This sort of attire covers nothing except what needs to be hidden, and thus implies that something needs to be hidden. This would be totally contrary to the planet's Edenic nature. Instead, I played around with the idea that Perelandrians might sometimes opt to wear clothes for the sake of expression, but not out of compulsion. This seemed like an idea Lewis might approve of. I was vindicated a few months later when I read The Great Divorce, in which the citizens of Heaven only ever wear clothes to express an inner beauty. Now as to why Ransom would wear clothes to this planet, I'm not sure. Doing so out of a nagging Earthling compulsion seems more in line thematically with the kind of misinformed decision Professor Weston would make... Give me a break though. Judging by the above picture, I probably can't draw naked people worth beans anyway.