Lyssatism

Castle covered with thorns

This painting was made using Sakura permanent ink pens for the outlines, and Windsor & Newton pan watercolors for broad patches of color. For the details in color I used Derwent Inktense water soluble permanent ink pencils and Carbothello pastel pencils. This illustration was designed as part of a project to create three illustrations for the fairy tale Briar Rose by the Brothers Grimm.

I decided to model this castle after Hohenzollern Castle in Bavaria, Germany. Versions of the Briar Rose fairy tale originally began circulating in the 13th and 14th centuries. The Brothers Grimm added it to their collection of tales in 1812. The Brothers Grimm were from Germany, and many of their fairy tales were set in the mysterious Black Forest, so in my reseearch I decided to take inspiration from Bavarian culture from roughly 1300-1500 AD. Even though it was rebuilt fully in the late 1800s, the style that was chosen for Hohenzollern Castle was Gothic Revival - so a somewhat romanticized version of what would have been found in the Middle Ages around 1300-1500 AD when the Briar Rose story first appeared, but not so far off from the historical look as to be off-putting. This castle is the ancestral seat of the Imperial house of Hohenzollern, and it is dramatically perched atop a wooded mountain in the Black Forest.

For the second image I looked for images that were representative of Bavarian fashion from roughly 1300-1500 AD. I took inspiration from the hairstyle and fashion in Portrait of Princess Sibylle of Cleve and Altar of Saint Catherine, both painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The spinning wheel in question is also representative of the style that was popular in Europe in the 1400s and 1500s. Contrary to popular renditions, spinning wheels in the 1400s and 1500s did not have pedals at all, and did not have built-in bobbins or spindles. So the object that Briar Rose probably pricked her finger on would have been a hand-held spindle used with a walking wheel. In effect, the wheel is just a means of storing a longer thread than a normal spindle, but it is basically just a glorified spindle.

For the third image the bed is modeled after an actual bed in Hohenzollern Castle, and the prince's clothing is similar to 15th century Bavarian fashions.