Over on Instagram, it’s #folktaleweek. A forum for illustrators, artists and other creatives to respond to a different title for each of the six days, inspiring images based on all things ‘folk tale’.

This the image I created for ‘Birth’, the first prompt.

In my childhood, I was gifted a copy of “Grimms Fairy Tales” when my late Uncle died.
Always fascinated by the macabre (out-dated story-themes even then) I revisited the book as inspiration.
Long before science allowed more understanding of the dramas of childbirth, women must have been so frightened of what their offspring may be born as. Imaginations and fears must have run riot, conjuring thoughts of animals or tiny people being born. And so Thumbelina (or Thumbling), and the life she may lead thereafter, was born....