This painting is more concept art, but this time for the musical “Into the Woods.” This musical, if you haven’t seen it before, takes all of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and combines them into one great big story. Cinderella is a major character in the play, and as you know, her mother has died and she is forced to live with her evil stepmother and step sisters, having no fun being deprived of her right to attend the ball/festival. You may not know, if you are only familiar with the Disney version, that Cinderella doesn’t have a magical godmother, but instead she has a magic tree. You see, when Cinderella’s mother died she was buried at a gravesite in the woods. Cinderella visited that grave everyday and cried there, and her tears watered the ground, prompting the slow growth of a magic tree. On the night of the festival, the magic tree speaks to Cinderella while she is sobbing over her mother’s grave, and offers her a dress and slippers with which allow her entrance to the festival.
To execute this painting I dressed a friend up in garb from my extensive costume collection, and photographed her under a beautiful vine covered tree. The whole painting was done in watercolors, except for a few small details in the magic bubbles which surround the tree.
