B is for Brittney Lee and Beaumont

It took me a bit of searching to decide on which artist to share with you today; but after going through many artists I love that have names that start with the letter B, Brittney Lee stood out to me the most.
I love this girl’s work! She has a very enchanting illustration style that I’ve found appealing for a long time.  The first thing I’d ever seen from her was a portrait of the little Mermaid from Disney’s movie- done completely with flat shapes and paper!  You can look at that piece if you click on this link.  I instantly fell in love with her use of shape and layering.  It is absolutely beautiful. (also she did costume designs for Frozen)

SO I decided to try to do a sketch using her style as an influence.  I had to have some sort of content for my illustration- so I looked up one of my favorite french fairytalests (I’m claiming that as a real word).  Madame Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont.  She wrote the original Beauty and the Beast- though not the one that became famous (that is a whole different story).  I thought of doing figures from Beauty and the Beast- but I feel like it is WAY over done- so I found another story she wrote called ‘Aurore and Aimee’.  I could not find a good English translation of it- the best I found is Here and appears to be a student translation of the story.  The story is simple but seems like one that you could ‘break’ and have a lot of fun with in a retelling.  I’m not writing a book- so I didn’t do that- I just drew the sisters from the story.