The Snow Queen - Work In Progress

I haven't drawn any faces for quite a while but at this time of year I always start thinking about my favourite winter tale, the Snow Queen, and get the urge to do some illustration for it. I've drawn and painted her a few times over the years and she looks different each time. Here I was thinking of her beguiling aspect and tried to give her large, hypnotic eyes and a very serene face. 

At the minute she doesn't look very regal but I intend to add colour and some other elements to the page, although I think she's already visited my studio and turned it into the Ice Palace so that could be an interesting experience!

Stories About The Sea

One of my enduring loves is folk and fairy tales. Many of the original stories were ambiguous and often very dark. Many had elements which our near ancestors found unpalatable and so were changed or omitted from later versions.

This evolution is an interesting thing in itself. Each generation seems to develop its own take on them, reinventing what is currently relevant to it and morphing it into something new. In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in folk tales and what they have to tell us and I think this whole notion is something I'm playing with more and more in my artwork.

Incidentally, one of the best books I have read on the cultural significance of fairy tales is Clarissa Pinkola Estes' Women Who Run With The Wolves. If you're at all interested in this subject I highly recommend it.

Queen of the Night

I am making a conscious effort to do some bigger pieces of work, well bigger for me anyway. My normal size range doesn't go beyond about 4x3 usually so it's something of a challenge to do. This is 6x4. Ok, not a lot bigger I know but it makes a change.

So, this is the fairy queen in her garden. She didn't start off as a fairy, but part way through painting her she whispered to me that that's what she was and you can't very well ignore royalty now can you? The flowers in the picture are a night-blooming proteus named Queen of the Night, which also happens to be my favourite Mozart aria too.

For sale on Ebay here