Sketchbook - 'The Singing Bone'

In the previous post I mentioned that I wanted to ensure my work doesn’t seem too geared towards children, and I’m happy with the way my devils, coffins and playing cards looked together. So in my illustrations about ‘The Singing Bone’ I made sure to include the imagery of the pig’s heart and the human bones,which are key to the story anyway, and embody the theme of abject horror which I believe is often removed from traditional stories over time in order to make them child-friendly and more saleable to mainstream audiences by large industries. For instance, in the Grimm brothers’ ‘Cinderella’, there is a much more violent and gruesome twist compared to the popular Disney adaptation: Cinderella’s little birds peck out the eyes of the evil step-sisters, who had also butchered their own feet to try and fit into the glass slipper. (https://www.tckpublishing.com/dark-fairy-tales/) 

The other images I drew are bulls, a lamb and a wild boar - I used medieval bestiaries as references again, and I started to realise that a big part of those images and what makes them special is their elaborate and colourful borders. On the upper drawing of the bull I layered different colours of paper to make a rectangular frame with the bull on top and I think that image is much more interesting than the drawings I did straight on the page, the different colours grab my attention and the contrast of the organic animal shape breaking the straight geometric lines behind it create more of a presence and sense of importance to the bull. I definitely want to do more with the borders from now on and add patterns to them as the traditional ones have, and I think this could translate quite well into stitch.


Reference images:
Arm bones and pig's heart-
Bulls-
Boars -


Lambs-
Arm bones and pig’s heart



Arm bones and pig's heart-








Bulls -



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