Tim Burton and his sketches



If you want to understand Tim Burton, you have to examine the strange spidery drawings he has been doing ever since he was a boy.

One of the most pleasing and, of course, most instantly obvious features of Tim Burton's drawings is how closely they resemble their creator. His sketches are a lifetime's work - largely produced in the planning of each of his films - and the physical similarity is unmistakable. From his earliest short film, Vincent, through Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and his most recent production, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, they share his sad, charcoal-crusted eyes, attenuated bodies and hair that his long-term collaborator Johnny Depp once said expresses "much more than last night's pillow struggle". But emotionally, too: Burton's sketches all have something of the boyish lost soul, the baffled outsider to them, usually in their gloomily sloping-down eyes, or their slumped stance. Or maybe it's their all-black outfits, a uniform that Burton himself wears every day, like a student living in Camden Town in the 1980s, as opposed to a hugely successful film director on a wiltingly hot summer's day.

To look from Burton to his drawings is like looking at an Escher drawing, as if the artist had simply reached around and drawn himself - or, more simply, that his stories are about him. It is more difficult to avoid such connections when meeting Burton in person: at first, he is all awkward jerks, plucking at his sleeve (black, of course), tugging at his scrag of hair as if hoping to pull his conversation out of his scalp and barely able to say whether he'd like still or sparkling water. But he soon becomes easy and light, with a childlike smile. Like his drawings - and his movies - there is an awkward, slightly nervy outer coating that belies a sweet, gentle centre.

We look through sketches for his earlier films together, which he surprises himself by enjoying after initially hiding his eyes from them. I ask if he will draw a picture of his original image of Willy Wonka and, encouraged by his pleasure in the earlier drawings, he eagerly agrees, quickly sketching out a simple line figure that, true to form, bears a distinct resemblance to its artist. Thinking this would be the natural next step, I ask him to draw a portrait of himself, seeing as he seems to have been doing it all his life. Yet he literally jumps backwards into the couch and draws his legs underneath him, as if trying to disappear his ebony figure into the ivory upholstery: "No, no, no, nooooooo. That's the thing, people say."Like, I know that people say Scissorhands is slightly biographical but if I think about it too closely I get freaked out. It's weird; I need to feel connected but also distanced. That's why I don't write a lot."


- Hadley Freeman-