Plate V — the forest

October's plate, and the first one of fall.

This is the illustration I have been looking forward to since the very beginning.

After the huntsman spares her and tells her to run, Snow White flees frantically into the forest. She has no plan, no direction, no idea where the path leads or how long she must travel on her own two feet, across sharp rocks and thorns. She has just learned that her own mother, the queen, wanted her dead out of jealousy. That betrayal and fear are all she can think about as she runs for her life.

In Grimm's telling, the wild beasts of the forest do her no harm. They notice her, they watch, but not one touches her. Snow White is unaware of everything except for what the huntsman told her: run, and never come back.

The painting itself has been one of the most enjoyable I have made, with its stream, background of mist, trees and bark and roots, and various forest creatures placed among them. The challenge, as always with a small figure at this scale, is that her face alone cannot reveal the mood of this part of the story, especially when she is turned away. The environment has to carry the heaviness instead, with the starkness of the place, the isolation, and the way the forest closes in around her.

The last addition I am working on is the leaves in the foreground. They break up the space and give a sense of scale, but they also soften the deer at the lower right, turning it from an inserted element into something else to be discovered.

Plate VI arrives next month.