The Evil Queen (Once Upon a Time)

Done done donnnnnne! My goal was to get it finished before the show got to how the Queen actually prepares the apple. I'd have hated to have come this far, and then find out I'd totally gotten it wrong. But as long as they haven't shown it, I still had the excuse to go classic like this.

The Evil Queen

Got to ink it in at last! Here she is, the Evil Queen, in this particular instance inspired by the self-same villain from ABC's "Once Upon a Time."

Ultimately, I want to add color, but I'm not averse to line art fairy tale illustrations. Like those by H. J. Ford, who did the drawings for Andrew Lang's Fairy Tale books. H. J. is a big inspiration to me. As is Franklin Booth, who may not have done fairy tale art but is just plain incredibly amazing.

Work in Progress: the Evil Queen

This one ties together the other two work-in-progress sketches. You guessed it, Snow White. Although anyone who's gone through this blog knows I don't need much incentive to do fairy tale art, the TV show Once Upon A Time inspired this one. Her outfit is an homage to the one on the show.

If you're into the fairy tale thing, I recommend the show. Highly. Really a lot of fun.

It appears to be Snow White's time to shine - there are two movies based on her coming out in the not-too-distant future. Mirror, Mirror looks pretty fluffy, but Snow White and the Huntsman is one I'll be at opening night given the chance. Now there's a villain who deserves the evil in her title. In the trailer, the Evil Queen is not just bad, she's Sauron! Gotta see that one.

Arianna's Alphabet Book: And this is the easy one

The only one left is the letter I, which has even more going on in the illustration!

S for stairs was one of the first concepts I came up with, even though it's gone through a lot of revisions. I initially was going to do the classic straight but steep stairway up into a murky height. But when I began drawing it, a tall stairway didn't look as interesting as an endlessly meandering one. It seemed the sort of thing that an Evil Queen would build – if she must put a stairway in, she'll make it as inconvenient a way of access as possible.

Then I thought it would look even more daunting looking down.

The stairs won't daunt Arianna, but the shadows on the figures just might. She's incredibly intimidated by her own shadow. I think she doesn't like that it seems stuck to her feet. On sunny days, we have to pick her up, because she won't walk if she sees her shadow.

Maybe the figures are so far in the distance that she won't recognize that it's supposed to be her shadow. Or so I hope!