Friday 31 August 2012

Le petit chaperon rouge

Absolutely no reason why the title is in French. Just sounded better than a post all about little red riding hood.



I had originally planned this post as being about images from all fairy tales. I have always loved the illustrations from the books I grew up reading. People like Kay Nielsen and Maurice Sendak. They are probably a huge part of the reason I have ended up trying my hand at earning a living from the arts.


I remember my Mum telling me once that she often bought books to read to my brother and I because she wanted to use the illustrations to work from for her textile designs.



After starting my search with Little Red Riding Hood, I found precious little imagery that caught my attention about many of the other fairy tales. Mostly it was Disney that came up. And, for anyone that knows me well, I am a staunch opponent to Disney. Although in my usual style, being contrary and all, two of my favourite films are Disney's Robin Hood and Sword in the Stone. I never liked the Disney princesses all that much even as a kid.


I wonder why Little Red Riding Hood has captured the imagination so much. I'm not fool enough to think that this hasn't had a little something to do with it:


Red Riding Hood (2011) has helped to push this particular story back in to the wider public conciousness. (I imagine Snow White will be making more non-Disney appearances in google searches now.) I haven't seen the film so I can't comment on it, but I do wonder why the fairy tale is being fixed upon lately.


This post is honestly just idle meanderings of my conciousness. I had a whim to look at fairy tale art work and photography, it's not meant to be an essay on the up and coming popularity of fairy tales!


I love the above costume. I want the outfit myself.


I couldn't resist these astoundingly clever Russian dolls.

I find it interesting that while searching for German images of little red riding hood the 'riding hood' part is kept to (As in the image below), whereas the red cape look seems to be the one that has become so utterly iconic that even a suggestion of it is recognizable (as in the image above!)


I think the below picture is brilliant. Everything the artist, Noma Bar, does is brilliant actually (picture links to an interview with him, and more art works), but this one is particularly is perfect, the red cape doubling up as the wolf's red and presumably bloody mouth? Genius.


This picture just made me laugh! It's the tongue hanging out that does it.



For even more Red Riding Hood illustrations check out this post here, also look at this for the true and terrified face of Red Riding Hood (wouldn't let me link to a picture!)


As I said I had started out searching for all fairy tales. I found bearly (hohoho) any imagery on goldilocks. But the above picture was too good not to share. I find the bears surprisingly creepy. It uses few contrasts of colour, and simple shapes and yet manages to portray the two groups and their emotions perfectly. Scary scary bears.




Illustrations All images are © Chloe Cooter 2012 unless image links to another website. All images that are not © Chloe Cooter will be linked to the source (if possible) and credited in that way.

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