originally posted February 7, 2018
Every Christmas, my wife reads Natalia Belting’s Christmas Folk to the children, and we all love looking at Barbara Cooney’s wonderful illustrations.
Barbara Cooney’s art is detailed, sweet, and inexplicably moving. I can’t articulate the feeling her art evokes, but if you are curious about her phenomenal career, I highly recommend Dr. Nathan Perl-Rosenthal’s 2017 piece in The Atlantic titled “What Would Miss Rumphius Do?”
Above and below are a few of my attempts at mimicking Barbara Cooney’s style by reproducing some of the illustrations from Christmas Folk (1969). I began each study as a quick and easy ink sketch, followed by a more careful application of watercolour.
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