I have always greatly enjoyed folklore. Timeless tales from all over the world, sharing wisdom and the heart of their cultures, weaving worlds and magic into my everyday life.
This project began as a personal challenge for Folktale Week: the original idea was to illustrate some of my favorite tales from different cultures. As I was drawing, I started telling the stories to some of my little students and found myself changing the tales and making my own: the world my characters lived in wasn't one where helpless damsels await men to save and marry them; it was a world in which people of all ages found all kinds of love and expressed themselves freely, discovered magic without divine intervention and created their own ending regardless of expectations.
The stories started coming to life and keep on growing. Here is a selection of the first concepts for these new folktales, that are now being developed into a book.
