Little Heidi all bundled in her many layers of dresses taking a moment to enjoy a friend...

Done as an entry for the Tomie dePaola Illustrator Award, SCBWI.
The challenge was to do an illustration from Johanna Spyri’s great book Heidi. Any size, any medium.

"From the pleasant town of Maienfeld a footpath leads up through shady green pastures to the foot of the high peaks that gaze down solemnly and majestically on the valley below. Anyone who sets out in the path will soon catch the keen fragrance of low mountain herbs and grasses, for the footpath rises straight and steep to the Alps.

One bright, sunny June morning, a tall, sturdy-looking young woman, evidently a native of the mountains, was climbing this narrow path. She led by the hand a little girl, whose cheeks glowed as if there were a ruddy flame under deep-tanned skin. And what wonder? In spite of the hot June sun, the child was bundled up as if she were to confront the sharpest frost. She could not have been five years old, but it was impossible to tell anything about her natural figure, for she wore two or three dresses, one over the other, and a big red cotton scarf around her neck; her feet were lost in heavy hobnailed shoes, and the little girl looked quite shapeless as she made her hot and laborious way up the mountain."