For this exercise, I knew this fair maiden was not your typical princess trapped at the top of a tower. In my mind she came to me as a modern, rebellious young girl who cut her own hair with some kitchen-style utility scissors. Playing with things she shouldn't. (Does this sound like anyone I know? Me? Naaaaaah!)

Also, I wanted her to still be holding the hair she just hacked from her head with a look on her face as if caught in the middle of some major criminal act. The other thing I thought would be cool, was to create a wraparound cover and so, her other braid — the one still in tact — would wind here, there and everywhere ending on the back cover. There you'd see a mirror and in the reflection, you saw the back of her with her other hand holding the scissors.

Again, I started of sketching my usual, typical way, quite a bit of detail, trying an unusal angle, some weird perspectives.

The first couple of sketches show her to be more grown up. Would a teen really grab scissors and chop off her own locks? I doubt it, so I then brought the age lower and started to play with a younger image.

Just like the Billy Goats Gruff piece I sketched more toward an older style, so stopped and forced myself to step back. Thinking about everything my husband had told me, I started to pull back and think of the bare essentials: hair, scissors, face, body, type — and not much else.

In my BGG feedback, one of my fellow illustrators had mentioned about which way she likes an illustration to face to help lead the reader form left to right in a book. I filpped BGG but it didn't work as well — in fact, it threw the composition off totally, so I reverted back. However, I tried it with this and I think it worked much more coherently and I liked the way the eye is drawn (pardon the pun) down to the foot of the page, ready to turn into the book.

I purposely wanted to keep it simple and so abandoned the idea of continuing this to the back cover with the mirror idea, etc.

The only part at this point, I might want to revsit/change, is the scissors. Perhaps make them bigger? Although, saying that, this is a 7 x 10" cover and when printed out, will probably read larger than you see them here.

Well, hope you like this one!

Sometimes, when an image comes to yu that fast and you feel passionately about it, you just gotta go with that flow and emerse yourself into it until you come out at the end. I could've taken until the end of the month to do this but sometimes, when I do that I tend to overthink a project and the end result fails.

Everytime I look at this I smile. My vision came through and that makes me happy. I feel I want to write a naughty, mischievous book about Rapunzel now, to go with this cover!

The post-critique illustration isn't done yet, I'm waiting on what everyone has to say. I'll post it when I'm done. Please pop back mid-October to see a revised version.

To offer feedback on my submitted illustration seen below, click here.