The Red Shoes

The book including this illustration can be ordered in my [Etsy] and [DaWanda] online shop if you wish to.




For the latest university project we were asked to produce a cover and 2 double pages for 4 different tales by Hans Christian Andersen.

Fairy Tales have always been a huge inspiration to me and my work so I loved every second of working on this project. Even though I would have enjoyed it more to focus completely on one tale and illustrate the whole thing instead of just interpreting certain parts of four different ones...
Anyway, I learned a whole lot during working on these and am now more certain than ever before that picture books really are what I want to create as an artist. They offer so much expressive freedom and creative choices - it's wonderful.



The second tale I chose to illustrate was 'The Red Shoes'.

Here's a small abstract of the evaluation I had to write at the end, regarding this particular double spread:

'Picture books also are “different from works of art in their composition, since every picture in a picturebook (except perhaps the last one) is supposed to encourage the viewer to go on reading.” (Nodelman, cited in Nikolajeva and Scott, 2001, p.152). A good way to achieve this is by including a so-called 'page turner' – a detail, verbal or visual, that encourages the viewer to turn the page and find out what happens next.
 In the first double spread for 'The Red Shoes' we find such a page turner in the feet that are seen on the far right side of the recto, literally leaving this page and intriguing the viewer to follow them.'


If you are interested in reading more about this project you can do so in my [Blog].



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