Looking Through Old Sketchbooks

Along side eating, napping, and drawing, looking through old sketchbooks is one of my favorite pastimes! You get to uncover anew lost characters, creatures, or stories. As well as see how your style has changed. Sometimes I redraw these lost old sketches. Recently, I got a chance to look through my old sketchbooks when I started the illustrations for my sister's novel (those will be a future entry). In one of them, I found a colored-in-drawing I had done of the cruel elfin queen from the Tam Lin fairy tale.


Here's a close up. Just a tid bit: the day I drew this picture, on August 2nd, my mom told me to draw ugly things. Yep, this was the one that started it all.


Below is the original. I love the style of the Tam Lin illustrations. They are my favorite out of all of the illustrations in the Enchanted World : Fairies and Elves book. I'm particurally drawn to tall dark Queens, such as this one and the Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. They are regal, cold, and awesome!



This book is beautiful and a treasure. My mom says she bought it in a used book store when we were very little so I've always remembered us having it. The illustrations include paintings by Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, J W. Waterhouse, John Anster Fitzgerald and others. The Enchanted World is a series of books each dedicated to different topics, such as fairies and elves, dwarves, giants, and even the fall of Camelot. I can tell you that I was surprised to find this series in our local public library. The fairies and elves book is the only one we have. I frown at the $7.50 marked on the inside because this book is priceless in my eyes.


Anyways. After looking at that drawing I did, I decided to do something in the same fashion (graphite with colored pencil). This faery maiden, whatever you like to call her, is not anyone in particular. She's probably one of many faeries glimpsed in their glimmering midnight procession.


The close up.