Where there is a will there is a way

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Jane Ray's wonderous illustrations


I love how simple and ornate Jane Ray's illustrations are at the same time. They are full of spirit.

Above is an illustration from The Orchard Book of The Unicorn and other Magical Animals. (Good title by the way, specific, not general.)



I will definitely buy the book one day. Full of tales from all over the world. The one in the image above is a Scandinavian story, told in the Orkney Isles to explain how the islands came into being. The creature above is a monster with a head as big as a mountain named Master Stoorworm! The tale is called, in the book The Sea Serpent: Jamie and the Biggest, First and Father of Serpents.



Another wonderful tale in the book is The Feathered Snake: How Music Came into the World, a tale from Mexico (pages below).


She places smaller decorations throughout the book, which decorate the book as a whole, around the page numbers, contents and title pages, ribbons of motifs along the page text, some coloured page backs, at story close.
































































(Below) Jane Ray's deceptively simple illustration from the front of the book. Each fish is drawn with a different pattern.









No comments: