Bluebeard – Beginning Again

I have an uncanny knack for starting projects and not finishing them. This is a tiresome side effect of perfectionism, which has stopped me in my tracks before. This particular take-down was an online, mixed media art course called Wanderlust I signed up for a number of years ago. I was five weeks from the end of the course and didn’t finish.

Wanderlust is a full year of creating mixed-media art, which is art that is created using different mediums in one piece like paint and paper, or pastels and watercolor. The course is broken down into 4 week themes, with a different assignment and teacher every week. The theme for the final five weeks of the year was fables. The instructor wanted us to make up our own fables but I decided to illustrate an already existing fable instead. I chose the version of the tale of Bluebeard from Women Who Run with the Wolves.

Bluebeard is really a folktale but my journal, my rules! What’s the difference? A fable is a short story that uses animals or other non-human characters to teach a moral lesson. A folktale or folk literature, is part of oral literature, a genre of literature that was originally spoken or sung in contrast to works that are written.

The Tale of Bluebeard – An Overview

In the spirit of IMDB unhelpful, one-line descriptions of movies: A man with a deadly secret, intent on luring a young woman to be his new bride.

Here is a more descriptive version: Bluebeard meets a family of three sisters who initially do not like him and his blue beard. In order to prove he’s not so bad, he hosts a picnic in the woods. The older of the two sisters still aren’t into him but the youngest sister decides that he cannot be so bad if he would treat them to such a lovely day. When he offers his hand in marriage she accepts and goes off to live in his castle. Shortly after their arrival, he says he must go away on business. He hands her the keys to the castle giving her free reign to all the rooms except for the door that opens with the smallest, prettiest key. That one she is not allowed to open. Of course, she spends the whole day with her sisters looking. They eventually find the door and his deadly secret – the corpses of his previous 6(!) wives.

The Sketchbook Storyboards

My intention at the time was to create 5 different spreads based on Bluebeard. I had sketches done and even started the second spread in the book/journal.

I started painting the second spread and what was pretty disappointing and seemed childish. I CAN draw but am better at drawing preexisting items rather than from my imagination. And because I had decided what I wanted the image to be with little flexibility, I abandoned the project and so, never finished the course.

Fast forward to now, looking for a project to work on, I pulled out my sketchbook and the unfinished art journal for the course.

I sat there for a bit, staring at my old work and feeling unsure of what to do to make it work. I still didn’t like it. And it suddenly dawned on me, why am I trying to make this work? Why am I trying to force something that isn’t working and I don’t even like? Why don’t I just paint over it and start over? And paint over it I did! This immediately freed up my brain and opened the project up to a whole new direction.

I still wanted to illustrate Bluebeard as I love that folktale and I felt the concepts of the 5 spreads were still fine. Now, though, the ideas I have come up with feel much more in line with my “style” (whatever that might be at this point!). I do know I love collage and the Wanderlust course is about using mixed media. The new direction for these spreads feels like I will (finally!) finish the course in line with that idea.

Feeling Excited to Start Over

I had fun digging through all my old magazines and catalogs. The main Bluebeard character is a male who is not a very nice person and is also likely a mediocre magician. I was excited to find this image of Jared Leto in an old Vanity Fair, seated and flipping cards. I was hoping to find a man seated who looked slightly unsavory!

Anthropolgie catalogs I saved did not disappoint for the picnic aspect. Their catalogs were artistic and often had a surreal quality to them which is perfect for this.

In the first part of the story, he is attempting to get a young woman to like him and marry him by hosting a picnic in the woods for her and her sisters, to prove he is not so bad. The old Anthropologie catalogs I saved did not disappoint in their images of fancy plates and picnic type images and also, that their stuff is more artsy lends that kind of odd energy to the spread.

The Bluebeard Series

• Bluebeard – the beginning (you are here!)
• Spread 1 – the ensnaring romance
• Spread 2 – the little door
• Spread 3 – the bloody key
• Spread 4 – the brothers in the distance
• Spread 5 – the gruesome end

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////////// RESOURCES

• Overview of Bluebeard on Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebeard
• Fable – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fable
• Folktale or Folk Literature – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_literature
• Buy the Book – Women Who Run with the Wolves
• Wanderlust/Everything Art – https://www.everything-art.com