Older Illustrations - The Juniper Tree

These are from 'The Juniper Tree' by Brothers Grimm (My illustrated version). It is one of my absolute favorite Grimm fairy tales, I remember finding an old dusty copy of Grimms at my local library when I was about eleven. Reading it late into the night. Probably post more of these sometime. My personal favorite out of these three is blood in the snow.

Faerie - sketch more, paint more, do more!

The more we do, the more we fail, the faster we grow.... I'm trying to up my productivity and to let go of pieces instead of trying to polish them up. I think that you get to a point when work on an image will not add anything to the viewers experience of the image. That is probably when you should stop - that is probably 'the finish line'. Here is something I'm letting go, though I'm not promising I won't come back to it ;)

I wanted to create a fairy of a different kind, something mystical and away from what one would normally expect a fairy to look like.

updated 25th July,'12 - Just in case anyone thinks I'm advocating not finishing work here is a post that I agree with completely about starting and finishing (Thanks to Scott Johnson who reposted it on google+). What I am talking about is when to declare a picture finished, I've previously leaned towards polishing every inch of the canvas but that is not finishing. Finishing is a difficult line to draw especially if you obsess and desire perfection (I'm a perfectionist and constantly deal with my ideal versus my 'at that moment skill level' issues). PLEASE FINISH your work but finishing something is a personal line you have to draw and sometimes you have to cut the lines and send your boat out to sea... even if you end up drawing it back to the shore later.  THE FINISH LINE

The Evil Mother, Marleen and the boy.

This is from one of the projects I'm working on at the moment. I'm illustrating two Brothers Grimm stories for the ipad for a publisher focusing on illustrated electronic books. One of them is actually one of my all time favorite Grimm's tale. I remember taking out a dusty tome from my small town library at about age 9 or 10 and devouring story after story. Going back to the library and scouring the shelves for more. Here are  some work in process shots with the final image. Enjoy :)

Below: Rough sketch, composition check. Initial color check.

Below: Except for a few details, the finished piece.