Honors Students, Folktales, and Dim Sum

(pictured: Dr. Snyder, standing and looking very professorial, 

a group of really intelligent Honors students, and me)

I got to talk about illustrating, my book, and folktales with a group of Honors Students from Mississippi State not too long ago. They were brought up here by Dr. Christopher Snyder (dean of the Honors Program), and, as both of us like Chinese food, we all met for Dim Sum.

The students were great - I got to share my experiences, as well as hear theirs. Which included math, astrophysics, political science, and medicine, so I definitely got a lot out of the lunch as well!

The Silver Rings - It's Here!

The Silver Rings is now available at http://www.brattlepublishingstore.com/trade-publishing/the-silver-rings!

Here's the book description:

Alice and Celia are identical — as twins, and as the recipients of ghastly treatment from their horrid stepmother and stepsisters. To escape, they flee to their fairy godmother Mozzarella’s house. There, Mozzarella advises them to separate and make their way in the world, offering them the rather dubious assurances of troll skin disguises and silver, somewhat magical, rings.

Alice manages to find an abandoned cave of treasure, and settles in to blissful solitude. Celia, on the other hand, runs afoul of a bad-tempered witch, and is promptly turned into a frog. Informed by her magic ring of Celia’s peril, but not her whereabouts, Alice sets out to rescue her. Instead, she finds herself atop a glass mountain, avoiding the love-struck Prince Randall. With Alice’s quest at a standstill, and Celia still enchanted, will the sisters ever realize the high hopes that their godmother envisioned?

Got to create a lot of artwork for the book as well, so more pics to come!

Map of Midgard

Another illustration for The Making of Middle Earth - a map of the world as the Vikings saw it. The author wanted to show where Tolkien got the concept of "Middle Earth" as the name for the world.

This started out as just a sketch, that I kept building on until this point, and it ended up getting used in the book!

Coincidentally, there's been a lot of Norse mythology around the house lately - the kids saw the movie Thor and wanted to know more about him. I had to explain that this is based on a comic book and not actual mythology, so then they wanted to know the real stories. So for their bedtime stories I've told them about Tyr (or Tiu, that Tuesday is named after), and now we're in the middle of how Thor got his hammer from the dwarfs. The Midgard Serpent shows up in the Tyr story - now that I think about it, I should show them this map too, it might help them get it!

Meadhall

A reconstruction drawing for the book The Making of Middle Earth, about the sources Tolkien used to create The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

This is a cutaway section of a meadhall, where feasting and drinking would take place, all with a big fire pit raging in the center of the floor. With wooden walls. And a thatched roof. You know, when I put it that way, that may be the reason why people need to draw what they used to look like, instead of taking a picture of any existing ones.

Sleeping Beauty's Mother-In-Law

Another one from the Modern Grimmoire book - it even shows up on one of the "Look Inside" pages on Amazon!

The illustration comes from an older version of Sleeping Beauty, by Charles Perrault. In most current versions, it's all happily-ever-after once the Prince kisses her. In Perrault, once she wakes up her troubles are only beginning. The Prince's stepmother is an ogre, who wants to eat her own step-grandchildren, along with Sleeping Beauty as well! And, were it not for the kindness of the cook, she would have succeeded. Then the ogre tries to kill them all with snakes and poison toads… but why give away the ending?