An African Lesson

Inspired by the Guardian fairytale series, my tutors at Putney decided to set a project where we were required to illustrate a fairytale of our choice and bring the drawings back to the classroom where we would reproduce them in a monoprinted format. This meant that we needed to consider the unpredictable and tone-driven medium of monoprinting. From a previous brief encounter with monoprinting, I felt it was best to keep lines simple and take advantage of suggesting an emotive dimension with varying tones and textural values inherent to this process.

The fairy tale I selected was 'The Orphan', taken from 'Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales'. These fairy tales aren't for the faint hearted, and very few would be deemed suitable for young children. I chose this African fairy tale, because of how it drew similarities with many other well-known tales across the globe. The common motifs of a mother feeding her daughter beyond the grave, a heroine's inner magic and a process of metamorphosis, all highlight the fact that fundamental similarities exist throughout humanity, especially in the way that we understand and construct our values and relationships in the immediate family and wider social spheres.

For me, the most important part of the story was the girl's metamorphosis from bird to human, upon the removal of a needle from her head. This was the final turning point of her transformation from a young girl, ready to face the responsibilities of adulthood. The clever allusion towards the processes of growth, means that we understand in her metamorphosis that hardships are often a path to growth and experience makes us stronger.