In honour of Valentine’s Day, an unintentionally sexually suggestive illustration of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. In setting out to depict this scene for a homework exercise in a watercolour class I’m taking, I purposefully set out to avoid the undercurrent of sexual tension with which this scene is often presented, and which by now has become more than a little bit of a cliche. Clearly, however, my subconscious was having nothing of it, and it dawned on me towards the completion of the image that I had only succeeded in switching the sexual metaphors, with Little Red Riding Hood in the role of a timid male erection confronting the wolf’s menacing vagina dentata. Once I realized this I of course went about heightening the effect somewhat (but not much, as it was almost all already there). Now I’m thinking I must return to this subject and explore consciously what after all seems to me like a promising approach to this over-illustrated scene.
“O Earth, how like to Heaven, if not preferred
