‘O Grandmother, what big ears you have got’, she said 1920

This is Arthur Rackham's illustration of Little Red Riding Hood, made with ink and watercolour. The whole scene is built up with a flurry of cross-hatched pen strokes, like tiny scratches on the page. Imagine Rackham hunched over his drawing board, carefully building up the textures of the wolf's fur and the folds of Red Riding Hood's cloak. He’s really going for it; every detail is rendered with such care. The patterns on the curtains and bedspread become like a dense thicket of marks, mirroring the dark forest that Red Riding Hood has just walked through. You can almost feel the artist’s hand moving across the page, each stroke deliberate and precise. It’s a real tour de force of illustration. Rackham's showing us that fairy tales aren’t just stories. They're also about the way we see, the way we feel, and the way we make sense of the world around us.