My imagery comes from myth, folklore and the old oral story-telling tradition, not from fantasy literature; and although I did some commercial illustration in my youth, I don't see myself as an illustrator now. A fascinating compendium investigating the undersea world of the merfolk exploring: oceanic magic, merfolk language and customs, underwater villages, historical evidence of merfolk and their unfortunate capture, maps of the oceanic zones and their various inhabitants, perilous creatures of the sea and how to avoid them, and remarkable revelations about merfolk/human relations. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. What, I ask, is the most difficult thing about rendering his vision of the world and its magical spirit in paint?

Meanwhile, Wendy was creating art for exhibition, teaching, writing, and publishing magical books of her own: the Old Oak Wood series for children ( A Midsummer Night's Faery Tale, The Winter, The Faeries of Spring Cottage), and The Art of Wendy Froud. This lavish, oversized picture book revisits the collaboration between Froud, prominent fairy artist, and Jim Hensen, Muppeteer, in the creation of their cult favorite The Dark Crystal. You turn and look at the land around you, and you begin to see the faces in the trees and faeries flitting through the shadows.The whole book is pretty delightful, even for--or perhaps especially for--those who couldn't stand Froud's pretty, ethereal faeries. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. It was on the set of The Dark Crystal, however, with its imagery rooted in folklore and myth, that she found her greatest satisfaction, working with the shy-but-brilliant English faery artist at the heart of the film. Now we're beginning to recognize how important it is to have a vibrant relationship with the land beneath our feet.

I don't like things to be fixed too solidly or explained too fully; I want each viewing to be like a re-telling of a tale, full of new possibilities. They embody the wild, mysterious and spiritual forces to be found in nature, and help us to reconnect with wonder and mystery inside our own souls.So I said to myself: What do I have to do to convince a publisher that there's an audience for this art? After Alan and I published Faeries, he moved on from folklore to illustrate Tolkien and other literary works -- but I discovered that my own exploration of the Faerie Realm had only just begun.