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The Wind in the Willows · Kenneth Grahame

The story behind Ratty's Picnic

Wind in the Willows picnic print in the style of Beatrix Potter: an open picnic hamper on a riverbank in soft watercolour, with Ratty's list of food, from cold tongue to soda water, set as one long word in a curve around it.Video coming soon

The scene

From The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (1908), Chapter 1. Ratty opens the picnic hamper on the riverbank for Mole, and the list that follows is one of the great food lists in English. Here it is exactly as the book prints it, in one long word, curving round the hamper.

The style

A soft English watercolour on plain white paper: light washes, fine pencil-thin line and lots of open space, like the nursery books of the 1900s.

The inspiration

The look comes from Beatrix Potter's watercolours for The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902): the soft washes, the fine pen line and the small animals at home in a garden. The hamper and the riverbank are my own.

The style reference this print was made from

How it's made

A print of a digital artwork in the style of an Edwardian children's book watercolour, not an original. Each carries my printed Chapter & Scene signature.

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