Illustration - The young piper

My task was to illustrate “the young piper” which is an old irish fairytale. It is the story of a family that has four children, three are beautiful and one is ugly and handicapped. The handicapped one is also an asshole who teases and dislikes everyone, thus everyone dislikes him. People think he's possessed or exchanged by fairies. That's why they want to test him by pinching his nose with a burning hot iron. But his mother, persuaded that he is her son, protects him. One day an old bagpipe player, who travels from town to town playing bagpipe for a living, comes across. The kid seems attracted by the bagpipe and want's it badly. He manages to get it and starts playing like a boss. As soon as he plays, the music forces everything to dance. Even the chairs and desks. But as the young piper is an asshole he uses that skill to make the people fight against each other and harm them in any other imaginable way. Hence the family is forced to move house. As they pass a river the young piper jumps into the water playing bagpipe while sweeping away. It is said that the young piper returns to his folk, the fairies, as he is a changeling. A changeling in this case is: when the fairies give birth to an ugly child they exchange it with a beautiful human one without the parents noticing.

Okay, pretty strange story isn't it? It's part of the Fairy legends and traditions of the South of Ireland (1834) by Croker, Thomas Crofton.

At first I wanted to illustrate it the traditional way with nice drawings and all. But as 90% of all fairy tales are drawn that way I find it lame and overdone. That's why I dropped that Idea and went deeper into the story, thinking about its meaning and succeeded to interpret it: symbolically it's a story about the irish conflicts with the british. The changeling is an ugly stranger which invades the beautiful irish family (: The british invaded Ireland). The changeling is a little bastard who teases and harm the Irish (: the Brits tortured the Irish). They try to fight the young piper but do not succeed as his mother protects him (: the Irish tried to fight the Brits back several times but somehow they didn't manage to get them off the isle). The young piper jumps into the river and sweeps away to his folk (: finally 1922 the irish manage to become the Irish Free State).

So I wanted to combine the tale with the history by using transparent interlayer. But I did not stick with that Idea as, in my opinion, it wasn't appealing enough.

So one more time I started from scratch. This time I focused on Irish music since it's the story about an irish bagpipe player. I listened mainly to songs from the Dubliners. Those lyrics and melodies got me in a flow and I started to paint very music oriented illustrations:

For the book cover I used real goat leather and for the binding, a traditional 4 hole Japanese binding, I used red thread to give it the look, feel and smell of a real bagpipe. As they're traditionally made of goat leather and often with red thread as you can clearly see in the small picture.

The Interior is green which is intended to project the reader to Ireland. As green is the principal color of the country and represents its amazing landscape.

That is the first scene: the fairy coming from the river and bringing the changeling to the mother. The red hands are there to show that the mother accepts the child as her own.

This page shows the rest of the family. The dad on top of his three beautiful children. On the right, the changeling get's the bagpipe. He's not just getting it but literally becoming one. As you'll see the next page.

Here the changeling's body has become a bagpipe and you can see how he's teasing everyone, even the cat and the dog. The hands coming out of the changeling's head as he plays represent the music. This is because in the story he's able to take control of others body as well as getting chairs and desks to dance. Also, note the bucket which, in the story, is held by his mother and knocked over by the music.

That's the last scene with the young piper jumping into the river and returning to the fairies. Here the tears of the mother form the river. On the bottom you have the father who's quite happy because he they can return home now and he disliked the kid anyway. And the shocked brothers.

That's it, thank's for the love & feel free to contact me if you'd like to get a copy.

-tjb