“The most important thing you should know about witches is that they dress in ordinary clothes. They look like ordinary women. They live in ordinary houses and they work in ordinary jobs….Witches spend their time plotting to kill children, stalking the wretched child like a hunter stalks a bird in the forest…. Real witches are quite bald, although of course they wear wigs. You can distinguish a witch from an ordinary woman by the purple tint to her eyes. Real witches have no toes. Their feet have square ends, revolting stumps where their toes should be, so they never wear pointed or pretty shoes—just plain, sensible shoes.”

Thus begins the spectacularly scary children’s movie The Witches, based on the book by Roald Dahl, and starring Anjelica Huston. Since witches feature so prominently in fairy tales, and since we are in the darkest, grimmest time of the year, today seems like a good day to learn everything there is to know about witches. Just in case.

Go on, watch part 2 (and 3 and 4…) if you dare.

I hope you enjoy this creepy, lovely treat!

James Jean's Snow White

If you’re at a loss for a last-minute gift for the fairy-tale nerd in your life, consider this: The newly released collection of James Jean’s Fables cover art. I’d describe it in loving detail for you, but there’s no way I can out-do the publisher’s own press release.

Now, for the first time, the exquisite FABLES covers by James Jean, winner of multiple Eisner and Harvey Awards, whose diverse clients include Prada and Pepsi, are collected in one extraordinary volume!Perfect for any art-book library or FABLES completist, this volume includes never-before-seen sketch material, along with insightful commentary and remarkable insights into Jean’s creative process. Also included is an afterword by celebrated FABLES writer/creator Bill Willingham. Designed and annotated by the artist, this deluxe, oversized hardcover includes ten vellum sleeve inserts, an embossed case and other fine art details that make FABLES: COVERS BY JAMES JEAN as elegant and unique as the FABLES covers themselves.

James Jean, in case you hadn’t heard, is a genius artist whose portfolio includes art videos, a stunning collection of paintings and drawings, and, most importantly for you right now, this collection of covers from Bill Willingham’s wildly popular comic series, Fables. (Fables is the comic book that inspired the TV series Once Upon a Time.) It lists for $50, but Amazon is offering it for $31. Jean’s portfolio site is also exceptional, with a selection of prints, jewelry, textiles, and other goodies for sale directly from the artist.

For those who’d like learn more about the world that inspired Once Upon a Time, Clockwork Storybook hosts a lively, robust forum dedicated to all things Fables. Willingham himself hangs out there and chats with fans, so it’s a great place to get a behind-the-scenes, authentic sense of the world, its author, and the folks who love it. Fabletown fans can also peruse reviews of the various collected volumes on Goodreads, or just take a chance and buy Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile from Amazon and see firsthand what all the fuss is about.

Check out Jean’s crazy video for Prada – I’ve posted it before, but it’s always nice to visit this weird world again:

"Till the Last Petal Falls" by Tim Shumate

Give your favorite Disney fan some saucy, original artwork this holiday season AND support an independent artist all at the same time. Tim Shumate has five fantastic fairy tale prints for sale over at Society 6, and each one costs just under $20. It’s good for your budget, it’s good for the economy, and it’s good for art. When it comes to gifts, it’s hard to beat these prints for sheer, unvarnished virtue and style.

"Waiting for Love's True Kiss"

Shop the rest of Tim’s awesome gallery.

And of all the offensive music we could find, the music of the Jesus Lizard [link N(entirely)SFW] was up there at the top of the list. Raw, atonal, screeching, profoundly obnoxious – the Jesus Lizard was dazzlingly rude. But secretly that was not my favorite thing about them. What really caught my attention was their album cover art. It was…exquisite. Disturbing. Masterful as a Renaissance oil painting, and almost as profound. What the fuck was a nasty band like the Jesus Lizard doing with album art like that?

So punk.

Well, it turns out that the band was friends with a guy whose dad happened to be a world-class oil painter who was weird as hell and an incredibly good sport: Malcolm Bucknall. (Later I found out that Mr. Bucknall was my best friend’s uncle. They had me over to dinner one night in their grand, Victorian house in Austin, TX, and I nearly died of hero worship.)

What do you think, deer?

Malcolm Bucknall’s paintings are massive studies in sensual, uncomfortable surrealism. He uses the painstaking techniques of traditional oil painters to graft animal heads onto the bodies of Elizabethan lords and ladies, like fairy tale characters lost in the twilight lands between worlds.

This baby grew up to be a health care lawyer.

It’s easy to imagine the subjects of Bucknall’s paintings making deals for one another’s souls, or being tricked into giving up three wishes to eager heroes and heroines. His recent work has moved away from oils and into watercolor washes and line drawings, but it’s no less masterful and weird.

Check out the rack on that bear!

If you like Malcolm Bucknall’s work, you can peruse a rich, satisfying archive at his gallery site. He’s represented exclusively by D Berman in Austin, Texas, and there’s a decent interview with him on the site.

Did I mention the Willie Nelson portrait?

Have you already heard of Sveta Dorosheva? I must confess that I knew nothing about her until today when I stumbled across this interview with her in the ever-engaging Coilhouse magazine. But now that she’s on my radar, I’ll be watching her like a hawk!

With the mastery of shape, line, and audacity of Aubrey Beardsley, plus a narrative passion that (if properly nurtured) may one day approach Arthur Rackham’s, Dorosheva’s work satisfies my hunger for beautiful, seductive images in a way that few modern illustrators do. (Ray Caesar may be the only other who pushes the same buttons.)

From the Coilhouse interview:

I guess Russian fairy tales are the strongest influence from childhood, but I don’t mean that in the ‘sarafan&kokoshnik’ sense:) I mean they were full of wonderful and scary things, events and creatures, and that influenced my picture of the world for life. I remember that when a kid I took all of it for granted – evil stepmothers that wanted to eat their stepsons’ hearts and brains because he who eats them, would become king and spit golden coins…talking wolves and fire birds, immortal skeletons, frogs and birds throwing their skins and feathers off and turning into beautiful ladies, dead water that puts the pieces of a hero chopped by treacherous brothers together, and live water that then makes this frankenstein body come to life, witches with poison pins that turn people to stones… none of them were ‘terrible’ or ‘wonderful’ – they were just part of a fascinating plot. I guess childish perception is different from adult – it does not divide things into monstrous and beautiful. It just absorbs it all without labels, taking it all for granted.

I remember my three-year-old son seeing a dead bird in the street once in December. He insisted that we go and see its metamorphoses every day. I felt rather ill at ease, but he was INTERESTED, because he did not KNOW it was ‘disgusting’… To him bird-turning-to-a-skeleton or frog-turning-to-a-prince is the same type of natural metamorphosis that makes the world tick and such an interesting place to observe, there’s no good or bad, there’s just infinite variety and wonder. And that’s the thing about fairy tales. They booster imagination through metaphor when one is still open-minded, with no moral or social blinkers on (very useful, very reasonable blinkers, but still limiting).

And, lucky for us, she has a book coming out!

From the author:

It’s a book about people and human world, as seen through the eyes of fairy-tale creatures. They don’t generally believe in people, but some have travelled to our world in various mysterious ways. Such travelers collected evidence and observations about people in this book. It’s an assortment of drawings, letters, stories, diaries and other stuff about people, written and drawn by fairies, elves, gnomes and other fairy personalities. These observations may be perplexing, funny and sometimes absurd, but they all present a surprised look at the things that we, people, take for granted.

I strongly encourage you to head over to her portfolio and wallow in page after page of her exquisite work.

Many thanks to Coilhouse for consistently showcasing such top-notch talent.