Dec 31, 2021
Here´s an illustration that I am insanely proud of! Last winter one of my projects was to do illustrations based on Diana Wynne Jones´s book “Howl´s moving castle”. It is a lovely book and I remember reading it as a child and now I had to read it again. I´m afraid I was a bit too haste so I´ll probably need to re-read it again in Finnish at some point. Anyway, the story is about a young lady called Sophie Hatter who gets turned into an old woman and ends up working for a wizard named Howl.
There is a Ghibli animation made of it but I haven´t seen it yet (it´s on my list). I just found out that Christian Bale is Howl´s English voice…why I can not imagine anyone else doing his voice. What it comes to illustrating not seeing an adaptation usually works as an advantage because then you are not accidentally thinking about a film.
Anyway…
this is a scene from the book where Sophie finds a mandrake. It took place in an alcove so I spent quite some time on Pinterest looking at garden-like alcoves (welcome today in the life of an illustrator).
Watercolour and mixed media illustration. You can find prints and all kinds of other goodies from my store.
Character designs for Diana Wynne Jones´s Howl´s moving castle.
Witch of the waste.
Hattie and Lettie.
My wizard Howl became a strange mixture of Jack Skellington and Lucius Malfoy.
Altogether I made three illustrations inspired by Diana Wynne Jones´s Howl´s Moving Castle. The book is lovely. It takes place in an imaginary land called Ingary and also in Wales. For those of you who don´t know I´v lived past four years in Wales studying children´s book illustration and yes, I am from Finland originally.
Strange thing life isn´t it. You´ll never know where you´ll end up.
This is a scene in the book where Sophie is exploring the moving castle and strange potion bottles in Howl´s dirty bathroom caught her attention.
This was one of my favourite illustrations projects I´ever did in university. I absolutely loved painting this piece in particular and adding all the little potion bottle labels. There is watercolour, coloured pencils and a paper collage.
Source: https://www.fairychamber.com/blog/category/howlacutes-moving-castle
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