Category Archives: Fairy tale art

Camille Rose Garcia’s “Snow White”

“Snow White” is getting exhaustive play in the media right now, for reasons unknown. I’m not complaining, mind you, but I do enjoy watching stories rise to the forefront of the collective unconscious. The latest entry into the “Snow White” media maelstrom is an illustrated version from underground sweetheart Camille Rose Garcia.

Art dealer extraordinaire Kirsten Anderson wrote a feature article for art wonderland Hi-Fructose:

 

Hi-Fructose favorite Camille Rose Garcia (Volume Eight) is following up her successful interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s ” Alice In Wonderland” with a new illustrated version of the Brothers Grimm story “Snow White” and exhibition of the complete works for the book at Michael Kohn Gallery next month. Illuminating Garcia’s trademark witchy line art with her easter egg color palette- this book is sure to delight her legion of fans! Garcia will be signing books on her West Coast book tour at the end of March so check to see if she will be swinging by a city near you! View more preview images from the book and exhibition below. -Kirsten Anderson

 

Hop on over to Hi-Fructose to see more images!

 

Roald Dahl’s “The Witches”

“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.

John Turturro Reads “The False Grandmother”

It’s a snowy, blowy day here in Seattle, which makes me want nothing more than to cozy up with my computer and watch animated fairy tales on YouTube. Fortunately, OpenCulture.com delivered a delicious treat: John Turturro (Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, Miller’s Crossing, etc.) reading a tale from Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales, “The False Grandmother.” Kevin Ruelle animated it in a moody, minimalist style that suits it perfectly. (Sadly, I can’t find anything about Mr. Ruelle on the innernets right now.)

 

I hope you enjoy this creepy, lovely treat!

Last-Minute Present: James Jean Collection of Cover Art for Fables

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:

 

Tim Shumate: Disney Never Looked So Good

You can ring my Belle any day

"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.

Who's the fairest of them all?

"Waiting for Love's True Kiss"

 

Shop the rest of Tim’s awesome gallery.

 

The Art of Malcolm Bucknall: I didn’t know bears had such nice boobs

You’d probably imagine that a kid coming of age in a small, Texas, swamp town in the ’80s would have no choice but to listen to country music and muck about in the bayous trying not to get eaten by alligators. But strangely enough, a different path opened to me, just as wide and easy and obvious as if it were the only one: punk f-ing rock. For whatever reason, Port Arthur, Texas, had a thriving punk rock culture in the ’80s, and I ate it up with youthful abandon. My friends and I skateboarded around the oil refineries, we went to Houston to see bands whose names were dorky acronyms (SNFU, DRI, MDC – I am not even kidding), and we drove around in our crappy, old cars blasting the most offensive music we could find as loud as we could.

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?

I mean, right?

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.)

Beautiful Beast

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.

The Most Beautiful Day

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.

There there, Bare Bear

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.

What Kind of Fool Am I?
HRH Willie Nelson

Did I mention the Willie Nelson portrait?

 

 

Get to Know Sveta Dorosheva

She's leading the next wave of illustrators

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).

From her 'Book illustrations' portfolio, via Coilhouse

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.

From her online portfolio

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.

Fairy tale commercials

Today’s visual art Wednesday post isn’t about a single artist. It’s a collection of fairy tale commercials! I love advertising (I know, I’m a pervert), so it pleases me triple when people make clever ads in my favorite genre. Enjoy as the characters you know and love take a spin through the marketing machine.

Little Red Riding Hood:

Rapunzel:

Cinderella:

Princess and the Pea:

Sleeping Beauty:

And my favorite: Fairy tale in a vending machine:

WTF, Peter Gronquist?

The Last Unicorns

Fairy tales are full of magical animals that turn into princes(ses), give sage advice, cough up enchanted items, and otherwise save the day. Who hasn’t yearned for an encounter with a magical animal, just once?

Sculptor Peter Gronquist gives us that chance, in his own, twisted way. His latest show, The Evolution Will Be Fabulous, reminds me of the villain in my favorite FTF student story, a cruel king who’s killed one of every animal in the forest and mounted their heads on the wall. Only this time the king was hunting magical animals, and those animals were deliciously dark and weird and dangerous.

I mean, right?

You can see these macabre beauties for yourself in Los Angeles, CA, at the Gallery 1988 in Venice through November 4. And you can take one home for as little as $5,000, if that’s your thing.

All I need is a tall ship and star to steer her by!

Thanks to the ever-amazing Super Punch for bringing this bit of wonder to my attention.

Introducing Diana Sudyka, FTF Anthology Illustrator

What a lovely raven!

I’m just a few short weeks away from sending the first collection of illustrated student stories to the printer, so it seems like a good time to introduce the illustrator, Diana Sudyka.

I met Diana at Flatstock in Seattle two or three years ago, and was immediately taken with her work. To be totally honest, I thought she was out of my league, but I got her business card and chatted her up anyway, just for the fun of imagining I could one day hire a fancy-pants illustrator like her. Then I found out she’s married to Jay Ryan, on whom I have a total art crush, and I was so smitten I could hardly even look at her.

Civil War Widow

But the world is a very small place, and in the course of chatting, I discovered that these two super talented humans are friends with a friend of mine from back home, and suddenly we were laughing and sending him rude texts and telling embarrassing stories about him, and generally having a pretty good time. And then it didn’t seem so crazy or far-fetched that I might get Diana Sudyka to illustrate my little collection of stories, after all.

Buy this print!

So there you have it. The rest is history. A year or two later I called her up, sent her my illustration requests, and BANG. Seven gorgeous illustrations that I’m proud to print. You can see the rest of Diana’s portfolio at her site, or you can visit the Decoder Ring to treat yourself to a limited edition print.

I can’t wait to show you the FTF illustrations!