11 July 2009

Illustration Friday: Hollow



I did this piece as a student at Hussian back in 1993 for my junior year Children's Book class. Each semester we had to pick an existing children's story and make it into a working dummy and complete the cover and a few of the illustrations. That year I choose the Grimm Brother's The Six Swans. I won't go into too much detail about the story but what you need to know for this illustration is that a girl's older brothers were all turned into swans and in order to turn them back she had to remain in silent seclusion in the hollow of a tree and sew shirts made of star flowers. This is why she has moss growing all over her clothes and her hair is a bit of a nest. Amazingly though, she always manages to have nice gigantic pink eyelashes. I made that last part up.

This piece was done on stretched 2 ply cold press Arches Watercolor paper with gouache, Doc Marten's Dyes and colored pencil.

11 comments:

Coreopsis said...

This is beautiful. I love the colors.

Hans_77 said...

the colours in this are great. really nice job

Artsnark said...

gorgeous colors! Thanks for sharing the backstory

Yuri said...

I like your take on the six swans girl! beautiful art :)

Fernusan said...

great illustration, I like so much that redhair texture, and colours!

Indigene said...

Beautiful color and style! Just lovely!

Distressing Delilah a.k.a. jenn said...

Very sweet Hollow! Thanks for explaing! I love the colors you used!

Unknown said...

your image is amazing! the colours are simply stunning! x

Unknown said...

It is very pretty! Love the colors you chose

Chuck Dillon said...

Thanks everyone, I do appreciate it and I'm glad you like it.

Unknown said...

such a beautiful piece