"Inside the box (coloured)" by Suzan Bongers

This image was commissioned by Pure Fantasy, a Dutch magazine for fantasy, science fiction and horror stories. This image is an illustration for the story "Elfjes uit Ierland" (fairies from Ireland) by Thirza van Damme. Appeared in the Castlefest edition August 2006.

The story tells about a boy who has a box with toy fairies, but he doesn't know they are alive. The fairies don't know they live in a box and they are faced with sudden darkness (the lid of the box closes) and earthquakes (the box is moved.) It's a fun and yet sad story.

An overview of the world inside the box. I liked the description of the white house in the story. No, it's not the hand of God, but the boy who's rearranging things inside the box.

At the time of illustrating I didn't know Pure Fantasy also printed coloured images as I had only seen B/W images in the early issues (or that's what I remember.) However after sending my three illustrations I was asked for coloured ones. I decided to colour this image as I like this one best. The deadline didn't allow three coloured pictures.

The sky is orange, because that's the light that comes from the world on the outside. The story said it was orange most of the time and it did result in an interesting colour scheme.

Coloured with Photoshop 5.5