Little Red Riding Hood

I knew for sure when I first started planning "Grimm and Other Folk Tales" that I'd be revisiting Little Red Riding Hood.

This is a small, old watercolor from about seven years ago.

I love stories where heroic innocence beats something really bad. In the ones I really love there's no real danger. Nothing is going to hurt them. Max? He's the King of All Wild Things and though "they roar their terrible roars" they can't touch him.

That's not to say nothing happens, or there's nothing bad, dangerous, or perilous; whatever you'd like to call it but even in the scariest, worst place you know that something good will happen, not because you hope it will, but because it has too. The woodchopper is coming.

Whether it's Max in Where the Wild Things Are, or Little Red, there's something about the naïveite of the hero that resonates with me. Good will work out simply because it's good.

Even more than the innocence of the hero (or heroine) , I love the woodchopper; whatever form he takes.

It touches on the theme we talked about a couple posts back with Snow White, J. R. R. Tolkien's concept of "eucatastrophe" -- a good catastrophe, a sudden turn of events in which the outcome is joy, not sorrow.

"Far more powerful and poignant is the effect [of joy] in a serious tale of Faerie. In such stories, when the sudden turn comes, we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart's desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through." -- Tolkien

I might be stretching it a little far maybe, with Little Red Riding Hood, tying it to Tolkien's quote, considering the origins of the tale and ways one might interpret it, but still I believe good will work out simply because it's good.

I'd love to know what you think.

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Well, enough of that, on to the work.

Something like 7 or 8 years ago I did a painting of Little Red Riding Hood. Behold.


I ended up giving the painting to Justin who liked it a great deal and still talks about it.

I always liked it too, in the back of my head, but never felt it the drawing was all that good. I liked the idea though. So, much like I did with this drawing below which I took and reinterpreted into the cover for Ticket,

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(which, Ticket, incidentally is very nearly sold out. There are literally only 2 left.)

I took the idea of the old Little Red painting and applied what (hopefully) I've learned in the intervening years and made a stronger piece.

the rough, the color comp.

the drawing.

detail.

One thing I do like about the old one that's missing from the color comp. is the lightness of the trees and gradation of darkness from the top to the bottom behind them. I'll have to apply some of that logic when the time comes to finish this.

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Little Red Riding Hood
from Little Red Riding Hood

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Overall update on Grimm and Other Folk Tales : Things are going very well. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the traditional work, I've gotten all the drawings and half of the paintings done. My goal is to be done with the watercolor and have it all scanned this weekend and begin final work early next week. We are right on track. April 3rd opening date here we come. Well! With that, I leave you with the subject of the next post :

Next post : Hansel and Gretel, or a lot of a lot of trees and two little kids.

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Archive of Grimm posts :
The Old Woman in the Wood

Schneeweißchen, or Snow White

The Four Clever Brothers