Fairy Tales

Illustration by the Great Arthur Rackham for the story "The Old Woman in the Woods"
I copied this image for a class assignment last fall, it can be found here (gotta love shameless self promotion).

I love fairy tales. I believe I've mentioned this before. When I was perhaps 4 or 5 my parents got my sister a bike for her Birthday. Shortly thereafter my dad ran over it and destroyed it. My parents were unable to afford replacing my sister's bike and my dad, feeling understandably awful about the turn of events, bought my sister a collection of fairy tales to replace the bike.

I know that to most people a few books is not much of a replacement for a ruined bike (at least monetarily) but those books mean the world to my sister and also to me. My dad read those fairy tales to my sister and I  for years. "Cinderella", "Goldilocks", "Little Red Riding Hood", and that lot were not mentioned in this set of fairy tales. This is where I learned about "The Golden Goose" and "The Story of Caliph Stork." The illustrations were beautiful and the stories were wonderful.

This set of fairy tales was followed by other anthologies of children's stories. Ones where I learned about the "Transparent Apple and Silver Saucer" (a Russian version of "Cinderella" that is much more morbid than the French version we are familiar with) and the "Firebird". I don't think I was properly exposed to the fairy tales Disney taught us about until I was heading into my teen years and discovered Andrew Lang's Rainbow Fairy books.

There are 12 books in his anthology. Each one named after a color...The Red Fairy Book, The Blue Fairy Book, etc. It is perhaps the most complete set of fairy tales out there ranging from Grimm's folk tales to Perrault's fairy tales. Baba Yaga makes a few appearances as does Sigurd, and the Twelve Brothers (a personal favorite of mine). There are too many wonderful stories contained in those volumes to enumerate them all. I still go to the library often and read these fairy tales and admire the beautiful illustrations. It may sound odd but doing so calms me down and makes me happy when I've had a hard day.

It was these influences that filled me with the desire to draw. The stories are so lovely and simple, the illustrations so exquisite in detail, all I want to do is create works like that. This is why I'm studying to be an illustrator. The ability to tell a story visually is stunning to me. It makes me hope that some day a young child will pick up something I've put myself into, that I love and cherish, and that it will inspire them to create a visual story.

I love fairy tales.


From "Rosanella" illustrated by Henry Justice Ford for the Green Fairy Book.