This piece is different from what I’ve painted in the last year. I wanted to go back to children’s book illustration a little bit. It was nice to explore my own imagination more and go out of the strict botanical painting style.

For this piece, I looked at Yule and its celebrations and meaning. Yule being the longest night of the year, people used to celebrate (and hoped for) the return of the sun. In my mind, I imagined that on that particular night the spirit of Spring would wake up and silently look at the cold and frozen world. Spring would silently glide through forests and start imagining flowers and leaves where only ice and snow now existed.

To accompany this image, I also created a small text zine which basically told this as a short story. It was really fun to create the border and to caligraph the text. I think it gives the whole thing a more cohesive and comprehensive feel.

I hope you will enjoy this piece as much as I enjoyed creating it! I used watercolours and inks, and edited the illustration digitally to give it a more atmospheric feel.

If you like this piece, it is available as a special Yule/Christmas card in my Etsy shop. By buying my products, you support my work as an independent artist and enable me to keep on creating.