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Ravenous by MarcyKate Connolly begins shortly after the devastation of her debut novel, Monstrous ends. Published in 2014, I somehow missed reading Monstrous and will be adding it to my TBR pile. However, the only way that not having read Monstrous first affected my understanding and enjoyment of Ravenous was that I wanted to run out and buy it so that I could read the two simultaneously!
What drew me to Ravenous in the first place was the mention of Baba Yaga, the witch from Russian fairy tales who lives in a hut that stands on enormous chicken legs and has an insatiable appetite that includes eating children. For more Baba Yaga books, click here. But Ravenous is about so much more. Greta, a character from Monstrous, becomes the narrator of Ravenous. Greta has returned to her hometown of Bryre from the broken village of Belladoma where a usurping king, driven mad by greed and magic, has finally been dethroned. King Ensel, among his other heinous crimes, stole a magical cornucopia from the Sonzeeki, a sea monster living off the shore of Belladoma. Without this constant source of food, the Sonzeeki is forced to emerge from his cave every full moon to hunt. Without the sacrifices of girls from the neighboring town of Bryre, the Sonzeeki causes mass flooding in Belladoma every month.
With King Ensel gone, Bryre's King Oliver feels an obligation to help feed the people of Belladoma and plans to send an army to help with this. The start of Ravenous finds narrator Greta making an impassioned plea to King Oliver not to aid the place where she was held prisoner with other girls from Bryre, girls she watched fed to the Sonzeeki, one by one. When she fails, she returns home, her parents long disappeared, to her younger brother Hans. But Hans is nowhere to be found. Greta heads off into the woods to find him and quickly finds herself face to face with a hungry Baba Yaga, who makes a deal with her. If Greta can deliver the long hidden, magical cornucopia to her before the next full moon, she will hand over Hans.
Greta heads off again, heartsick to think that she will have to return to Belladoma and the castle of King Ensel. Her search finds her locked up in a hidden village where mermaids, centaurs and other half-human creatures created by the evil wizard, King Ensel's lackey, in Monstrous, are hiding from persecution. Freed in a burst of flames, Greta continues her hunt with Dalen, an exiled centaur, at her side. The two face mercenaries, including their brutal Vincali, who has developed a taste for using magic. Once in Belladoma, Greta and Dalen must stay hidden as they search the ruins of the castle using a maze of tunnels. Secrets are revealed, hidden maps and magics are unearthed and Greta finds she must betray people she once considered friends, including King Oliver, who, she learns has plans to use the cornucopia, if it can be found, to feed the Belladomans. As the two decode the map and search out the possible hiding places of a madman, the full moon grows closer and their inability to stay hidden. And, as Greta uses the magical potions she finds herself wanting to use them more and more and also experiencing the backlash of the magic.
One aspect of Ravenous that I especially liked was knowing that, even after Greta finds the cornucopia, she still has to deal with King Oliver and Vincali, both of whom want it for different reasons. It seems almost insurmountable, but Connolly plots with skill and all the pieces come together for a fantastically explosive climax and a very satisfying ending. Connolly weaves familiar elements from classic fairy tales into her stories but makes them completely her own as well. In one turn that I especially liked, Greta takes a collection of fairy tales with her on her journey to read and, over the course of the story as she shares them with Dalen, she notes that the fairy tales never end well, turning the "happily ever after" we are all so familiar with on its head. Happily, Connolly ends Ravenous, well, happily.
Source: Review Copy
By:
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on 2/14/2015
Blog:
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Most people know of the musical Wicked, a revisionist telling of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz that empathises with the ‘bad’ witch, but not everyone knows that it is inspired by Gregory Maguire’s The Wicked Years series: Wicked, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men and Out of Oz. He’s written other […]
Well, here she is finished... the fearsome
Baba Yaga. I really enjoyed this one, although if I was going to do it again I think I'd try to make her a little scarier. Maybe make her hair a little more wild and frizzy. And I also just learned that in some versions of the story, Baba Yaga has iron teeth, and sadly, I didn't give her any teeth. Next time, Baba, I'll be sure to give you some fierce chompers.
I still haven't decided which fairytale to do for October. I think I'll look back at your suggestions from previous months. And if you have any new suggestions, I'd love to hear them!
I hope you had a wonderful weekend!
I've decided to change the name of my
"2012 Fairytale Project" to "Twelve Tales". Its a bit easier to say, and well, it just sounds cooler, no? I think I'm two or three illustrations behind at this point, but I'll get caught up eventually (er... I hope).
For September, I'm working on Baba Yaga.
Baba Yaga and Vasalisa the Fair is one of my favorite fairy tales (its full of such cool symbolism and was nearly the subject of my grad school thesis project). But, in the interest of expediency and trying to get caught up with things, I decided to do a simple scene of Ms. Yaga, sans her chicken leg house, skull lanterns, or the fair Vasalisa.
I'm especially excited to ink and paint this one and am planning on pulling out the old masking fluid, which for some reason, I haven't used in years.
Last Friday I attended the open for the 'dangerous' art show -
(you can see more info at the artEast
site)
It is a small and diverse show -
- with a wide variety of media, size and subject matter represented (which I wish I could show you in more detail, as well as the yummy spread of culinary delights, and the many delightful attendees, but alas, my camera battery died after these couple of pictures...)
Baba Yaga is tucked tidily in the corner above. Thus far, behaving herself.
I am wishing the gallery well for the duration....
Awhile back I posted some Work In Progress shots of my painting of
Baba Yaga.... Since then I have entered her into a local juried show for
artEAST (the poster is at the end of this post) and she charmed her way into an acceptance.
This means she needs to be framed - so she was taken to a local place to pick out one, plus matts, etc.. After much deliberation, I did so, ordered and purchased. And waited.... Finally called since I hadn't heard anything and the matts were ready. Went in to pick them up, and the order was wrong. I think Baba Yaga is cursing this project. They cut new ones for me and assembled it for me in penance. I went to pick it up today -
- and as soon as she was home and unwrapped, she fell and broke the corner of the brand new frame. of course. She has to be ready to turn in to the gallery by Monday, so the husband got creative and figured out a way to brace it while the glue dries....
And clever wordsmith friend,
The Laundry Fairy, has already written an aria about the suspect saga:
(tune: "Hotel California")
Welcome to the Curse of Baba Yaga
Such an ugly name
In a broken frame
...Broken the frame with the Curse of Baba Yaga
Not a nice surprise
Get the angle vise.
We'll see how the saga continues. If I am very lucky, she will make it to hang on the wall and not injure anyone else around her. (If you're local, you're invited to the open on March 11. :-).
I've been experiencing a little bit of deadline-downtime and thought I'd try to wrap up some of my unfinished projects that have been laying around and glaring at me balefully from various parts of the studio... This one is my version of Baba Yaga - and I suspect you don't want to make her mad!
(If all goes well, I'll submit the ones that are effective to
Spectrum next week. Good practice at least...)
Here is the piece completely inked. I've coloured it since and am not sure what I think yet. It needs some tweaks. I tried colouring it in such a way that it didn't affect the contrasts too much that had already been laid down in pen and ink. This is easier to pull off colouring digitally but I wanted the imperfections of a watercolour wash.If you're curious I ink the foreground first and move backwards. I read somewhere that Arthur Rackham did this so I gave it a go and it became my usual practice. I find it gives me a sense of depth to work deeper into the picture this way.
I ripped the picture when removing it from the masonite board I had attached it to. Not badly and I fixed it with glue but I discovered, or rediscovered, how easily illustration board paper can separate from the board itself. The masking tape left rough spots everywhere I had it on the picture. As illustration board doesn't warp too badly I may forgo masonite in the future.
This is a pretty common scene in our house but this is the first time it's been captured on digital film... I can actually get a lot done this way. Many of my work days are ten hours long and Julie has similar days so this helps Henry feel a part of things and I think he's learned not to make any additions.
I'm working on the Baba Yaga drawing here, which I just now finished the inks for. I'm thinking this will be the inaugural piece in the online print store I'm opening. Does anyone have any pieces they'd like to have as a print?
I'm taking a short reading break right now and then on to the colours. I just picked up the beautiful and enormous Charley Harper art book. It's wonderful and almost intoxicating.
This week I received a fabulous '
custom drawing' from the lovely artist
Lisa Hunt.She takes commissions to create a figurative portrait of you, when given some key words or concepts. They are rather like mythological stream-of-consciousness drawings. Very fun to see and watch come into being.
The key words I suggested to Lisa for mine were: a younger/nicer version of a Baba Yaga figure - with her cottage in the woods, harvesting herbs with cats and chickens and natural magic. 'Green witch'...
I think this is very fun - both in concept and execution.
Thanks Lisa!
I've always been a fan of fairy tales where the main character's kindness to animals helps him or her become the hero of the story.The Queen Bee, by the Brothers Grimm is a good example. Baba Yaga and the Girl With the Kind Heart is another. Sometimes the main character is even mighty, and displays the wisdom of having humility even when one is rich and powerful, such as the legend of King
Previous WIP posts are here and here.
After working a bit more on the Chinese-white coated versions, I have abandoned them - too heavy of a coating made all the subsequent layers chalky and blotchy-
So I started yet *another* one on hot press, with a much lighter
initial coat of Chinese white -
(ah - the misleading nature of photo-flash...) - Here is the new one - which does look more 'done' in person- although I still have about 25% left to go...
And this one is direct painting onto hot press - which after another 25% I will then go on to the oil-wash stage.
I hope to be able to make more progress on her variations, but the next 4 fairy-horse books start up shortly and I also need to do some serious work on the
IMC sketch.
I also will be off line and not working much for the next little while (I go in to have some surgery tomorrow morning). See you when I am once again coherent.
Want to feel like you are painting forever without making any progress? Try doing four versions of the same illustration! *whew*
At the end of last post, I had printed out 4 versions of this drawing - 2 on cold press, 2 on hot. I painted a layer of Chinese White watercolor on one of each (to experiment with Edmund Dulac's technique). After that dried, I covered the whole surface with a wash of yellow ochre (it could be any color, and usually a darker value than this) - and while still wet, I pulled color back off the lightest areas.
I then started to lay down some initial layers of color. The
underpainting of white makes the washes a bit opaque and chalky (somewhat like gouache), but also makes the color incredibly easy to lift. (Next time I'm trying a lighter layer of white paint).
(Here's an example of
Dulac where you can really see the lifting)
Here are straight washes on hot press (left) and cold press (right). I normally paint on cold press - which I hugely prefer, and I intend to finish this one in the way that I normally work. The hot press is the
underpainting for the oil washes.
Even though this is really time consuming, it is very interesting - and useful - to be able to compare papers and techniques side by side on the same painting. A thing I rarely take time to really explore. Here's hoping I can take these all fairly close to finish to get the full effect.
These are the first few steps preliminary to painting -
In answer to
Kim, yes, after the earliest rough stages, I do all the subsequent drawings on tracing paper (utilizing lots of masking tape and layers and layers). Here's the last two versions of it before scanning.
After scanning, I print out greatly reduced versions to do value and color comps - as many versions as I need to feel happy about it. It saves me time in the long run if I resolve these issues at this stage rather than hit-and-miss in process.
I've enlarged the drawing and printed it out on a couple different varieties of watercolor paper -hot press and cold press - so that I can do a bit of experimentation. I want to do one version in my normal watercolor technique, another watercolor one a la Edmund
Dulac, and the other one with oil glazes.
First step in experiment - the initial wash of Chinese white (you can see the relative thickness of the paint layer on the right one) for painting in a
Dulac-
ish sort of way. More layers tomorrow.
Here is the drawing - finished pending a few more critiques...
After the responses to the
last posted sketch of her, I did some revising of
Baba Yaga and the composition -
I'm hoping this reads better? Mostly the same elements - but moved around a bit, and a more feminized version of her
witchy self...
(My mother very sweetly agreed to pose for me when I was there last week. Isn't she great!!)
Here's my first stab at non-cutesy, non-sparkly, non-young-girl drawing in several years. Having fun with the individual elements - still nudging the composition before moving onto value and color.
Baba Yaga is an intriguing figure in Slavic mythology. One of my favorite versions of her is done by Ivan Bilibin. Mine differs significantly, but for some reason I have an unreasonable fondness for her.
Here's the latest on the Consumer Protection Safety Improvement Act: CPSIA: It's February 10th, So Now What? Even though small businesses don't have to undergo testing of their items for children another year (but are liable if their products end up having a certain amount of lead or Phthalates), I'm still creating my nature table figures for people who are over twelve years of age. If you don't
Ravenous by MarcyKate Connolly begins shortly after the devastation of her debut novel, Monstrous ends. Published in 2014, I somehow missed reading Monstrous and will be adding it to my TBR pile. However, the only way that not having read Monstrous first affected my understanding and enjoyment of Ravenous was that I wanted to run out and buy it so that I could read the two simultaneously!
well, I still love her! :) and she is plenty fiersome!
The skull moon is awesome!
I love her! Deliciously spooky.
Wonderful job! The glow from that spooky moon is fantastic!
Absolutely beautiful. My favorite was Thumbelina! I can hardly wait for all 12 to be finished, I want a calendar for sure! Great job.
Wait, I feel dumb because you already did Thumbelina. :D I will think of another one.
Hi Brooke, love how she turned out. Brilliant job.
I think she's awesome!!