Nutcracker Book & Figurine

How fun! There one sits hunched over ones' drawing board, often a year in advance, painting Christmas while the rest of the world goes swimming in High Summer.....and suddenly, there it is, the project one worked on, in the stores, as a " real thing"....makes me feel quite Velveteen Rabbit-ish! I never stop getting a thrill when I open the box and finally see the final, end result.
It really is gratifying to see the bits & pieces all come together as a really-o true-lio thing.....most fun is to see the Nutcracker figurine made, dressed, come to life like the one I painted for the book cover.
This was a project that was great fun to work on.....it seems the original stories in this book by E.T.A. Hoffmann and Alexandre Dumas haven't been published in years and years and years.....I read them all 20 times before painting and there is SO much more to the Nutcracker story than the one we are all familiar with!
This set includes the book and the 8" Nutcracker figurine and is available at all Barnes & Noble bookstores.

Nutcracker Book & Figurine Set, front

Nutcracker Book & Figurine Set, back

illustration

Life Imitating Art.....Wintry Woods

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It's cold outside, pretty much everywhere it seems, unless, of course, you're reading this on the beach in St Croix or Mustique.
Lately, late at night, taking Baci the Corgi out for the last time before bed...an owl hoots from deep inside a frosty wood. I get shivers, not from the cold, but from listening to the haunting call. Suddenly I am transported to a much older time, to the days of Grimm's fairy-tales, the version of my childhood illustrated by Howard Pyle...where deep dark Wintry Woods stretched for miles, dotted by little  lamplit cottages, and full of wolves and badgers and owls.
I feel like we should leave a trail of breadcrumbs,

Inside, on my drawing board, I've been working on this painting. Maybe, just maybe, this is what has been going on in the Owl's Wood down the road.
I love it when life is like a picture book!