Vintage Books: A Fairy Tale Revolution

I was thrilled to be commissioned by Vintage Books to illustrate 3 fairy tales that have been given a feminist spin by 3 bestselling authors; Malorie Blackman, Kamila Shamsie and Jeanette Winterson. The tales were Blueblood, Duckling and Hansel and Greta- all modern takes on classic tales. I created the interior illustrations for the series to go alongside another title by Rebecca Solnit- Cinderella Liberator, which used original illustrations by Arthur Rackham- one of my illustration heroes. It was a real honour to illustrate stories by such well respected authors that I’ve long admired.

Working with book designer Friederike Huber, there was a lot of freedom to work out which parts of the text to illustrate. After reading through the tales several times, along with their original counterpart tales, I noted what I thought were the key scenes and very loosely created sketches for them. Then Friederike created the layouts and, with the team at Vintage, decided which illustrations would fit best. For Duckling, I took a walk around the local lakes in my area for inspiration on the setting, and looked over old photos from trips to forests in the UK and Germany for Hansel and Greta. For Blueblood I looked at a lot of fashion and interior design magazines.

I worked with a wonderful team at Vintage- senior designers Julia Connolly and Kris Potter, editor Charlotte Knight plus Friederike. It was one of those special projects where the working relationship was particularly creative and productive, with lots of ideas being bounced back and forth. The book covers were designed and illustrated by cover designer Anna Morrison- I was tasked with creating silhouette characters to be dropped into her beautiful designs.

The series is published today and available to buy from Waterstones, Amazon and all good bookshops.