I hope everyone has a very merry Christmas.

Perhaps owing to my mother’s lifelong love of horses, I have long adored draft horses and war horses. So, clearly, the princess needed a strong horse to ride in her adventures. Her story shall be full of rounceys, coursers and even a destrier.

This sketch is clearly older but I still like the structure of the horse. For some reason the princess has curled up on the saddle to take a nap… perhaps that’s why she chose such a large mount.

Yet another little pencil sketch of the fairy tale princess from the “set” of her playing with her hair. This is a style of hair that I have come to call a “half bun”, since her hair is so long that a proper bun would be ginormous!

Hmm… she’s looking oddly flirty again…

I thought I’d post another sketch from the “set” of the fairy tale princess playing with her hair. This time she’s using it as a shawl … and looking oddly flirty. How did that happen?

Pencil sketch of the fairy tale princess, done with several other sketches of her playing with her hair, which I have yet to post.

Ever since I learned that the story of Rapunzel goes back to the Italian tale of Petrosinella (1634), I couldn’t help picturing Rapunzel/Petrosinella as a dark, beautiful, Renaissance woman. So I did this little sketch on the computer. I like her with dark hair; Rapunzel is almost universally portrayed as a blond.

It is impossible to overhype this masterpiece.
I shall never outdo myself! My art shall forever be haunted by the magnificent illustrations for this book. Everything I have done before and everything I do after will pale in comparison. Your soul will weep with the beauty . . .
Okay, I’m done blatantly lying to you.

“The Little Book of Misfortune Cookies” at Amazon.com
Written by Josh Williamson, cover by Brina Williamson, illustrations by Anna Williamson.

Yes, that’s a rhinoceros sitting on that poor stickman.

The fairy tale princess in all her apricot-tressed glory. Done in pencil on one sheet of 8.5×11 paper. I almost never draw full-page sketches; they’re usually only a few inches tall, a bunch crammed onto one page.
Drawing all that hair detail was so fun! (I know; I’m insane) Sometimes it’s almost like Celtic knots. It got so complicated that I scanned it so I could fill in the color to see what was hair and what was not.

Happy Hallowe’en!

I couldn’t think of anything better for Hallowe’en than the fairy tale princess’s archenemy, the Wicked Fairy. Thought she looked Halloweenish, with the Gothic makeup, corset and claws(!). The green ’stars’ are fireflies. This sketch was done to test the look of her crescent-moon collar.

Wow! I still know how to make a post!

The fairy tale princess in Mother Gothel’s tower. An old sketch, done on the computer with the mouse, if that excuses the quality. It was mostly a color palette and lighting test, lots of lavender/lilac in ode to the rampion (‘rapunzel’) plant’s flowers, and terra cotta for the Italian version of the tale, Petrosinella (1634), the predecessor of Rapunzel (1812).