When I was little I truly wanted to be a fairy. I spent a lot of time thinking about how cool it would be to be able to hide under a leaf or fly with butterflies. And though I later became obsessed with logic, & grew up to be quite a skeptical person when it comes to real life, there is still a part of me that resonates very deeply with fairy tales.

So when one of Anu’s suggestions was fairy-tale, I jumped straight into a literal interpretation… with a bit of a meta twist, I guess, since in this case a fairy is reading a fairy tale to a littler fairy. Or rather the storybook is somehow reading itself into another dimension, so that the baby is literally able to grasp the words. (This sort of thing is where my hand takes over & the logical part of my brain has nothing to do with it!)

Fairies are a pleasure to paint, & for an extra treat I indulged myself with another of my favorite things– imaginary flowers & foliage. It was a very soothing experience overall, though it was a bit challenging that the main characters’ faces ended up being smaller than a fingernail! It would have been useful to be able to shrink myself down to fairy-size for that part!

If you like you can use internet magic to fly over to my Etsy shop to find this painting & prints.

Thanks as always to Anu for all his magic words, & for putting up with my highly illogical process of creating these A.Word.A.Day illustrations every year. This week has become one of my favorite December rituals, in much the same way that a bedtime story is my favorite way to end the day. Especially when real life is all too much. So it is particularly satisfying that this year’s AWAD week literally has a fairy-tale ending! And I hope we all somehow manage to live happily ever after!