Doodle 111 - Fairy Tales

I wanted to finish my winter trading cards today, but for some reason my mind wanted to draw something else, so I opened my notebook and started doodling.

At first I wasn't sure what I wanted to draw, but I soon decided it had to be this:

The Little Mermaid's Last Farewell - graphite and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 15 mns.

 I was maybe 12 when I saw the Disney's version of the Little Mermaid, before that I had grown up knowing only the original Hans Christian Andersen version. In it, the Little Mermaid gives away her tongue to the Sea Witch in order to become human, be with the prince she fell in love with and gain an immortal soul. She looses her family and home in the process and discovers that each step she takes on her human legs tortures her with incredible pain.

Despite it all she seems to be gaining the prince's heart, until he eventually falls in love with the princess of a neighboring country. The sisters of the Little Mermaid try to save her by exchanging their hair for an enchanted knife from the Sea Witch. If the Little Mermaid kills the prince and lets his blood touch her legs she would be back to being a mermaid and be saved from simply disappearing.

The poor girl can't bring herself to kill the prince, so she throws herself overboard and turns into sea foam.

It is a very sad tale of love found and eventually lost, and somehow I always loved this version much better.

After drawing that I decided I needed to draw something else since I have been slacking a bit lately.

I came up with a quick doodle:

The Captive Maid - graphite and mechanical pencil on plain Moleskine notebook. Aprox 10 mins.

I decided to come up with a story to explain this, and it goes sort of like this:

In an ancient kingdom there lived a powerful wizard, he served the queen and king of a prosperous and beautiful land. He was immortal and at one time had been wise and magnanimous.

After many centuries of living alone he had actually taken a wife, only to see her age and die while he remained young and healthy. Finally the loneliness had driven him mad, but he didn't let anybody notice this flaw.

One day he fell in love with a young and pretty maid from the castle. She was poor and with no family close by. After much deliberation he devised an enchantment that would make it so he could keep the young maid within his mind. After all nobody would miss her since she wasn't a princess or lady in waiting.

"This way she can always be with me, she won't die and I'll never be alone" he thought.

And so, one cold winter night he cast the spell over the sleeping maid who had never really noticed that the wizard had taken a liking to her. 

Time was different within her prison, and at first she was scared, lost and hopeless. Soon though, she began to figure out where she was, how to communicate with the wizard and slowly her strong will and intelligence allowed her to take some control of the wizard's own mind and movements.

She could peer out of his eyes into the world, study enchantments from books as he slept (she had learned to read at an early age), and finally, one day figured a way to escape.

That's all I have for now, maybe I'll figure out how it ends.