The Forbidden Planet International Blog

Eleanor Davis was asked by the Guardian newspaper to create some artwork for a series they are doing on fairy tales, including some illustrated booklets. I’ve a permanent soft spot for illustrated fairy tales – they must be among the first artworks we see as very young children, art depicting fantastical worlds of the imagination in books of nursery rhymes and fairy tales and fables, glorious pictures for the young, eager eyes to rove over in a delight of form and colour while a parent reads the story. Of course, some of us never quite grow out of this early love. And this is a good thing, because as adults we often need a little of the magical spark of the fairy tale as much as children; it makes the world more enchanting and besides, its where most of us learned to appreciate the wonderful worlds words and pictures could open for us. Eleanor was asked to depict scenes from Beauty and the Beast and chose to make her Beast very reptilian to make him more physically repulsive to a human – she has a whole selection of lovely art to delight you with on her LiveJournal, go and enjoy it.

(Beauty and the Beast by Eleanor Davis, published the Guardian)