Plate IV — The Moment Before

I can't believe it is already September, and Plate IV with it. I am already one third of the way through the tale of Little Snow White.

If you have been following along, you will remember July's long struggle with the courtyard composition before it finally resolved into the bridge crossing.

The final version of Plate III can be seen here.

Plate IV brings us into the forest, and to Snow White up close for the first time. The bridge crossing was meant to look like a routine outing, one of many walks she has taken with the huntsman without a second thought. She trusts him. She always has. What she does not know is that he has been ordered to lead her deep into the forest, kill her there, and return with her lungs and liver as proof for her mother, the jealous queen. In Grimm's original 1812 telling, the queen was her real mother, not the stepmother we grew up with.

She planned to cook the lungs and liver in salt, and eat them.

This is the moment she senses that something has changed. His shadow is beginning to fall across her left shoulder as he approaches from behind. She is not yet afraid, but the air around her has shifted. It is the first moment in the whole story where the world stops being safe.

The compositional challenge was to avoid the expected version of this scene, the one every illustrator paints: the huntsman looming with a knife raised, the confrontation frozen. I did not want that. I wanted the subtler, less obvious minute just before, when she senses the change without yet knowing what it means. The huntsman is a necessary character, but not the center of this plate. What matters is her face, her sudden awareness, and the shadow beginning to touch her.

A few passes of watercolor to go, then done.

Plate V, the forest itself, arrives next month.