THE WITCHING HOUR | 2021

Inspired by The BFG by Roald Dahl, featured in Design: Quartet Graduate Show at Manchester School of Art, April 2022.

“The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves.”

There’s something magical about the thought of a big friendly giant striding over the rooftops of London. I used to listen to Roald Dahl’s stories on tape as a child, imagining his weird and wonderful characters in my mind. He always seemed to capture the mundane and magical into one wondrous story, so for this illustration I combined the mundane, with his old doctors bag and costume inspired by photographs of Cezanne, with his luminous dream trumpet leaving a haze of stardust, to show the gentle, rugged giant possessing something magical within.

Gouache, pencil crayon and soft pastels on toned paper.