Thoughts on Popular "Faery" Art

One of my main motives for creating this personal compendium was to have it stand as a thoughtful alternative to the multitude of other "faery" and "fairy art" websites. I feel that virtually all of the ones I have come across are made by those who have missed the point completely. Thankfully, I am not the only person who has noticed this phenomenon.

This is not to say that I am the current grand master of capturing elusive beings of nature on paper; this is, in fact, a journey in word and image illustrating a personal learning process. The fae are teaching me how to draw them. Students of every discipline make mistakes, and I am no exception. The more I understand and the better my ability to intuitively portay that which lingers at the periphery of my perception, the less reliant I am on the crude, limiting vocabulary that currently defines "faery." I am sometimes prone to lean on the typical crutches of faery art: insect wings, pointed ears, and the like. However, when I do make use of these traits I feel that I am being guided, so to speak, to do so. Another distinction lies in the fact that I recognize the symbolic nature of these traits, and I do not make use of them in every image of faery I create. The creatures I draw emerge from the seeming chaos of Nature. Certain lines, facial features, etc. assert themselves from a clean sheet of paper, which in this case acts just as some other scrying tools do. If the fae themselves are so inclined, they may permit me to represent them on paper.

This is quite contrary to the generic approach to depicting faeries in a visual context where such things are included by compulsion. If the quintessential characteristics (i.e. butterfly wings, pointed ears, proximity to flowers and fungi, mediaeval clothing, etc.) were omitted, one would simply be left with a picture of a human being, albeit an attractive one. Other (but certainly not all) "faery artists" are merely content with copying images out of fashion magazines and adding stereotypical faery attributes. By changing curved ears to pointed ones, bare shoulder blades to ones that sprout dainty wings, exaggerating eye shadow, and adding token natural features including leaves and flowers, they simultaneously create a "faery" out of a supermodel and escape the punishment for plagiarising a photographer's original work. Popular faery art has been reduced to a simple equation : take one scantily-clad fashion model, add some whispy wings, throw in some vaguely natural objects and violá, you have a faery!

Indeed, I could produce so-called faery artwork through this process as well. By following the above technique, I could basically manufacture faery images in this manner (however, since I am more acquainted with drawing human anatomy, I could create them without the obvious references or downright copying of photographs from perfume and clothing ads), and many do. This page does not feature such creations though. In actuality, most of the images displayed (or that will be displayed) on this page were created spontaneaously while doodling in classes during moments when I was bored. I did not consciously intend to draw a faery, and so in most cases the wings and flowers do not appear because I did not feel the necessity to draw them to indicate that the subject was a faery. Upon inspection afterwards, however, I find that they are more accurate visualizations of how Faery makes itself known to me than in virtually any piece in which I have deliberately set out to depict Faery. These images, in my opinion, are more honest in their portayal, and that is why I have chosen to place them here. In his new introduction to the classic work, Faeries, Brian Froud speaks of his own honesty in representing the fae:

[H]e [Ian Ballantine, the book's publisher] had fallen into the trap (along with most people) of thinking that faeries are all fluffy and sweet, all gossamer and tinsel. Both Alan [the co-author and co-illustrator of this book] and I wanted to be as true to the subject as possible and to portay faeries as they really are. So we went back to the original source material and folklore description. We made nothing up. Ian was somewhat shocked as we started to produce page after page of wizened faces with sharp little teeth, most of them up to no good. We were painting pictures of faeries with their original power reinstated, not just airy whimsy. We were being true to the faeries themselves [. . .]. There is an intimacy of emotion expressed in the color washes and a directness of meaning in the pencil and pen lines that delineate faery forms.1

Faeries are not distinguished from humans by wings or pointed ears, but by an unearthly - or more accurately - an entirely earthly aura. For this sense that surrounds them, is them, and is a part of the earth in a way with which few mortals these days are familiar. The fact of the matter is that the magazine models are probably the least natural subjects on which to base a faery! Various types of implants, cosmetic surgery, large amounts of makeup and haircare products, and computer touch-ups do not constitute natural. I think that most of the aforementioned "faery artists" choose supermodels from fashion and teen magazines as their basis for faeries because those models have come to be viewed as the ideal beauty in our culture. In fact, faeries often appear to humans as intensely and exotically beautiful, but faeries are not humans, and they do not conform to the beauty standards of humans which change from decade to decade and sometimes from year to year. Perhaps models and actresses serve as the foundation for their art because, compared to the overall human population, their beauty is a rarity and something to be desired and envied. However, the fae are so unusual to us not because they are supernatural, defying age and gravity as models do, but because they are wholly natural.

All contents (unless otherwise noted) are copyright Desirée Isphording 2004, 2005 and may not be copied, modified, or distributed without prior express permission.