mythical remnants.
inspired by peter s. beagle’s the last unicorn.
“mythical remnants.”
gouache and ink faerie tale feet painting by hallie m. bertling
inspired by peter s. beagle’s the last unicorn.
my friend rebecca recommended this tale to me years ago. and i loved the excuse to go back and read it (again, again) in the name of research for a brand new magical faerie tale feet painting.
(it was also a “classic” animated film from the early 80’s that i never saw until adulthood, again, because of rebecca, which has its own cult following and nostalgia fan base!)
why do i love this book? it has all the marks of a traditional faerie tale. stories left hidden and ripe only for exploring further with the reader’s imagination. (for example, see prince lir’s exploits, specifically pages 177-178.) it’s also the classic quest formula: leave the comforts of home to find out if you are indeed the last of your magical kind. and be sure to gather your unlikely team along the way as you encounter witches and villains and n’er do-well townsfolk.
mr. beagle’s text is brimming with metaphors and similes (please don’t start marking them in your copy like i did; you just might go nuts and lose track of the story!), but each piece of language is pulsing with enchantment and sparse, elegant prose likened to a fully-fleshed out classic faerie tale.
there’s plenty of anthropomorphism— the natural world so full of magic itself that it comes to life. (looking at you, awakening tree full of love!)
there are men blind to the reality of the magic before them— and even enchantments in place to make them unsee what they want to believe.
so if the story is new to you: i’m so glad you get to discover it for the first time! i highly recommend the book!
and if the last unicorn is already a fave, i hope you love this painting as much as i do.
have a look at my painting process below, and then i’ll break down all the story iconography i included in the background pattern from the original tale!
the first thing i always do is to read the original source material. and then of course i’ll watch the film, listen to all the commentaries and bonus features, check out the graphic novel from the library, and then re-read the book another time or two, underlining key elements to the stories or characters, favorite quotes, and character features!
according to the book, our unicorn is smaller than a horned horse, cloven-hoofed, has “thin legs, with feathers of white hair at the ankles….” there are also some mentions of her being deer-like, so here in my sketchbook i’m working out both her posture and fantastical ankle feathers. :) she also has a lion’s tale, which i meant to make the color of her eyes, but ended up leaving white, her “color of snow falling on a moonlit night.”
after i’ve done all of my research, i go back through my mini moleskine notebook full of story and research notes and sketch out all the important shapes— whether plot points or images to represent characters within our tale. i’ll copy the drawings i want to use at a similar scale, and then trace them over and over, creating my background pattern drawing around our main character’s feet.
using a piece of graphite paper, i re-trace my pattern drawing down to watercolor paper. the graphite paper leaves behind a gray line— so i’ve maintained my drawing and can know where to “color” inside the lines. :)
i used masking fluid on the unicorn (and on the highlight of the “wine that drinks itself” flagon), did a light wash of a few rainbow streaks (what says “unicorn” more than a rainbow?!), and here am starting to fill in the story iconography shapes one by one.
i’ll explain each of the story icons below, but here you can see more of the detail— and the slow and steady process to give each shape its own color story. building up layers of color and adding a little bit more contrast or form at each pass….
i used both watercolour and, on the paper plates, gouache “leftovers” from previous faerie tale feet paintings when i painted the backgrounds opaquely. since gouache is rechargeable with water, i mix it on paper plates, which can obviously be saved- and stacked and stored- and i can therefore re-use my paint colors for new paintings.
you can also see my sketchbook at the top of my drafting table there- open to a couple pages where i was working out the best shapes for each character.
aaaaand as is often the case, i think of things a little too late. like, since it’s just a faerie tale FEET painting, no one really knows this is a unicorn until they know what story i’m representing. oops. ;) SO, i added a shiny gold unicorn shape in the bottom right hand corner so it could indeed be classified as a UNICORN painting. ;D
back in june, i created this rainbow-tastic unicorn piece for “junicorn” on instagram. i wanted to use it somewhere, so it’ll be coming SOON to the back of the luxe faerie tale feet bookmark behind the last unicorn’s painting. ;)
story fun time!
so here are all the shapes from the original story that you’ll find within the background pattern painting:
lilacs (the first line of the book: “the unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.”)
the butterfly (velvet, dark, and dusty, with golden spots on his wings and curling feelers; spouts a lot of nonsense poetry and snippets of songs he’s heard)
the red bull
nine wagons (mommy' fortuna’s midnight carnival; ordinary creatures glamoured to look like mythical beasts; although some of them might be the real thing)
the small brown spider (arachne of lydia, one of the other prisoners at mommy fortuna’s midnight carnival)
the cap of schmendrick the magician (black like his cloak since the color of his hat is never mentioned; and green stars like his eyes. he replaces mabruck, king haggard’s sorcerer who has a pointed, spangled hat.)
robin hood’s cap, a vision when they are with captain cully of the greenwood and molly grue (of robin hood, maid marian, and the merry men: “their faces were as beautiful as though they had never known fear.”)
the raised mark the shape of a flower that stands in place of her horn when the last unicorn has been turned into lady amalthea (the book says she has “amaranthine eyes” so i painted it that color.)
dragons (the last unicorn herself has slain dragons with her horn, and prince lir slays at least five dragons as offerings to her when she is in human form as lady amalthea.)
the cat (both an allusion to prince lir’s birth/finding, and the small, autumn-colored cat with a crooked ear and a black-tipped tail that gives clues for our questers to find the red bull’s lair)
the wine that drinks itself (one of the lyrics of the riddle to find the red bull’s lair beneath king haggard’s castle)
book quotes!
this book is full of amazing lyricism (the author is also a songwriter!) and here are just a handful of some of my favourite quotes:
“what could i ever search for in the world, except this again?”
“we are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.”
“besides, no wanderer was ever the worse for a wizard’s company, even a unicorn.”
“they see what you have forgotten how to see…she is a rarer creature than you dare to dream. she is a myth, a memory, a will-o’-the-wish. wail-o’-the-wisp….”
“he tried to explain to the oak that love was generous precisely because it could never be immortal… she means well, he thought, and gave himself up for loved.”
“haven’t you ever been in a fairy tale before?”
“you have all the power you need, if you dare to look for it.”
“the magician calls, but the magic chooses.”
“you’re in the story with the rest of us now… the story cannot end without the princess.”
“but i am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer.”
"unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever. the happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.”
“as for you and your heart and the things you said and didn’t say, she will remember them all when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits.”
“great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. it is all part of the fairy tale.”
the original, framed piece.
contact me if you’d like to collect the original “mythical remnants” gouache and ink painting! painting is 17.5 x 7.5” on watercolour paper; matted and framed in a handmade wooden whitewashed frame to 24.25 x 14.”