Woodland Fairytales

I open the book and read what's inside,
Princesses, castles and fairytales hide,
On the pages, between the words,
This is the place where I can create,
My own little world.

This is my own poem which I wrote after deciding to do fairytales for this project, inspired by my previous Alice in Wonderland. I have always found books to be a form of escapism, and truly to be the places where one can escape into ones own imagination. I wanted to capture this in m project by using what I see as the ingredients to a stereotpical fairytale.

The above illustrations are composed of my own images and images from the internet which to me represent a fairytlae land, which is full of bright colours and happiness, but with a depth to it as well. I liked the way that I had made compositions of illustrations and the use of bright colours from my previous Alice in Wonderland project, and wanted to carry a similar theme and style on, but making the final piece and the inspiration behind it a little different.

The above photographs are taken of my friend Elly and myself, on the Chevin near my home. Since bieng very young, it had always been a magical place to me, where I could climb trees and hunt for fairys, like the little girls from " A Fairy Tale" and the Cottingly fairys. Within the pictures I wanted to show Fairys, Elves and Princesses, the stereotypical fairytale creatures. I liked the style of photography of Tim Walker and was also inspired by the Vera Wang Princess perfume adveritsments.

To me, a fairytale wonderland is full of nature, not urbanised. Flowers represent this for me as thier bright colours are both magical and cheerful. By using the images which I took at the Eden project and of neighbours gardens, which I previously used in my Alice in Wonderland project, to give a continuity to my projects. I was again inspired by the delicate work of Georgia O'Keefe and wanted to create my own version of one of her pieces, using my own flower pictures. I also wanted to create a collage of images to pull together my ideas on nature and to look how the colours fitted together on a page. In the end I decided it looked too busy and the beauty of the images was lost. So would make the images far more spaced out using book pages as a background, both to age the fairytale and to tie in my poem, which was my inspiration for this project.

These are ICT manipulations of my own images, I wanted to make the colours more defined and change them in a way so that they appeared more surreal, magical and fairytale esque.

A fairy on a toadstool is an image that comes to mind when one thinks of fairytales. I wanted to use art history to re-create this. The fairy is a copy of a spray painted image by artist 'Ge Feng' and the mushshroom is an old textbook image from an unknown artist. I decided to use pen and cross hatch this image as I thought it would add some depth to the image and give an aged effect to it. I think I achieved this and am really happy with the outcome of this piece.

This is a copy of a disney sketch, of on of the original ideas for snow white. The Disney corporation is the master of re-creating fairytales into motion pictures that will remain in the mind of young girls for a life time. I wanted to copy on of thier images to experiment with how I would draw my own images of people, whether in a cartoon of realistic fashion.

I decided that I would use the book pages to 'wall paper' my castle and to follow the ideas presented in my poem. Originally I planned to use acrylic, but found that one lost the delicacy of the book pages underneath the thick paint. I also considered using coloured pencil but found that this was very difficult as the pages ripped beneath the hard lead. Therefore I decided to experiment with watercolour pencil as a mediator between the two, which I founf complemented the aged feel of the book pages while giving the delicacy and smoothness of the pencils and paint.

The above photographs are inspired by Tim Walkers style of photography and the type of phtography as found in magazines, which I thoroughly enjoyed taking, even if it was freezing!

I wanted to experiment again with the idea of using different methods of drawing my images onto the book pages, I pondered the idea of using cross hatching again, but decided that like the pencil this would not be delicate enough on the book pages.

The above images show my final castle, a combination of all my above ideas and the ideas I got from doing previous projects. I wanted to create a mixed media piece so I decided to build a fairy tale castle, putting my images on the walls in watercolour pencil, as previously experimented with. I made my castle from MDF and the towers from a cardboard tube. I then wallpapered it in book pages, drew and painted my images on to it. After finishing this I thought that the caslte looked a little plain and did not like the hole in the top, so decided to put a roof of ivy on it, as it is typically fairytale and adds the desired nature element. I constructed the roof from chicken wire and weave the ivy into it, as well as some drive leaves. I then wanted to give the ivy a wild feel so made it 'grow' down the towers, to give a continuity. I then mounted the castle on a picece os emulsioned MDF and decorated it using the flowers I had made from some rose petals which I had dried.

I was very pleased with the overall outcome of this project and liked the 3D aspect of it, as a piece which one could interact with and which reflected my childhood thoughts of what a fairytlae was.