I love Tomie dePaola's illustrations and this is quite influenced by him, especially in the decorative foliage and the little building. He uses acrylics though and this is a mixture of regular and liquid watercolors. I didn't stretch the paper which is why the top of the box is wavy! Also I used hot press watercolor paper and made a virtue of the fact that that takes washes less well than cold pressed by making the background quite textured, but I wonder what a more washy background would have looked like. I'm not sure who the figures are. I had in mind a Franciscan friar but realized too late that he would be unlikely to be carrying anything.
Maybe the person looking out of the window is Mother Julian of Norwich? She apparently dispensed homely advice through the window of her cell, a kind of mediaeval, religious agony aunt.
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