It is only my second illustration and I'm already claiming artistic licence! Okay, in the popular story by Joseph Jacobs, Jack carries down a golden egg from a hen, but the goose registers better as a silhouette and Jacobs stole the idea from Aesop's Goose anyway. From a historical point of view it seems likely that Jack and the Beanstalk has origins in Cornwall's legends of giants. In turn due to Cornwall being a source of tin in Greco-roman times, these legends possibly even go back as far as the ancient greek stories of Titans.
Process
This illustration was started on paper and scanned in. It was completed in Photoshop (I should add that none of the paper sketch makes its way to the final, It's purely a compositional guide on a layer that later gets hidden). Blocked out colour and then used some Olly Moss inspired use of the diffuse brush to great my gradients. Although I am not planning on creating screen prints from these, I am trying to limit my palette to 6 or 7 colours and use techniques such as diffuse and halftones to create blends etc. I think this is good practice.