Tale as Old as Time

Here’s another Beauty and the Beast concept painting I did! This knocks out two designs in one piece: Belle’s gold dress and the Beast in his human form. In the words of Glen Keane through Belle in a cut line, ‘Do you think you could grow a beard?’ I’m one of the people who wishes that the Beast remained in his non-human form, so I tried to keep some of his more “animal” features in this design (mainly those furrowed brows). Belle’s gown is perfect in the original film and if it isn’t Baroque, don’t fix it, so I tried to remain faithful to the original design. I imagined it being made of a more diaphanous fabric than the fabric in the animation, though. The overall style of this one is based on Gainsborough who to my understanding was one of the inspirations for the original film.