Feature Friday – Darkling Woods

This week I’m featuring a member of both FEST and FAE—Cat of Darkling Woods!

I’m a big fan of anything fairy tale.  I still get really excited when the princesses are out at Disney World. (But not that Jafar guy.  He’s kind of a jerk.  Trust me.)

What I love about Cat’s watercolors is the airy, ethereal quality they have.  Looking over her shop is like seeing a cloud of feathers that, upon closer inspection, each reward you with a gorgeous glimpse into her fantasy realm.  She takes her medium and, with her distinctive style, makes it her own.

This the piece that really caught my eye this week:

A bit of background information about me:  I hate Snow White.  With a passion.  I like a good damsel in distress as much as any girl, but something about Snow White brings out the bra –burning feminist in me.  Then there is the Disney incarnation of her, which I find just nails-on-chalkboard annoying.  I’ll have a bulleted presentation on the subject one of these days.

So for me to be absolutely in LOVE with a Snow White drawing is exceptionally unusual.  Cat’s just that good.

Check out her blog.  Then follow her on Twitter.  You have your instructions :)

“Grandma, what big eyes you have!”

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

From Geekologie

I’m a huge fan of fairy tales and folklore. They are windows into the cultural, social, and historical circumstances in which they are rooted.  In subsequent retellings, the modified versions reflect society's changing morals over time.

Red Riding Hood, for example, might have began simply as an illustration of a simple but very real danger.  Medieval Europe was sparsely populated.  Isolated villages were separated by miles of dense forests filled with boars, highwaymen, and of course, large wolves.  In a world where superstition and serfdom kept most people from ever traveling more than 10 miles from their place of birth, a trip through the King’s Forest to Grandma’s house could be treacherous indeed.  Not to mention Grandma might have the Plague.

It wasn’t until Frenchman Charles Perrault (also of Cinderella and Beauty and The Beast fame) published the Tales of Mother Goose collection in 1697 that Red Riding Hood even wore her red cape.  Of course, in Perrault’s time, a red cape was known as a standard uniform for prostitutes.  It is from this point that the now common themes of puberty, sexuality, and the wages of sin in the story stem from.  Today, Little Red Riding Hood is portrayed anywhere from the classic cherub with her picnic basket, to the sassy young woman of Sondheim’s “Into the Woods”, to the bloodthirsty vampire adversary featured in the Grimm table top RPG.  As the world lost it’s innocence, so too did Little Red.

And then you get things like the video above, which are just kinda cool.