Hi all,

Longtime lurker here. I think I used to have an old account wiht about three postings, but it either committed suicide or I forget the login details. Ah well.

I started getting on a War of the Flowers trip again some days ago, so I did a portrait of Poppy Thornapple yesterday and I thought I'd share. I've wanted to do several illustrations inspired by the book for ages (ever since I finished reading it), but mostly never got beyond the sketch status, since I'm mostly too intimidated to mess up the picture. Therefore I just did a simple portrait :)

Portrait of Poppy in her Mourning and Meet-the-Family clothes

It's been years since I read the book and I only found two somewhat detailed descriptions of her, so it's entirely possible that she looks entirely different to what she's supposed to. That's also the second reason why I'm posting...

My memory is more than bad and I forgot lots of visual details that I'd need for more pictures, so I'm hoping some of you have better memories than me and can help me out with some questions. Any help is very much appreciated. Otherwise I'll have to use my creative license and be torn apart by angry fans because I messed up someone's eye colour.
Sooooo...

1. Does Poppy have long or short hair? I couldn't find a specific description of her hair, except when it's mentioned that her hair is almost completely hidden when she meets Theo for the first time. Long hair seems to fit the Goth image better, but I can also imagine her very well with short hair.
2. I remember reading that Thornapples have white eyebrows, but in the first description of her it's not mentioned. So either she doesn't have them, or she dies them black (entirely convincing, since she's not too fond of her family anyway), or Theo was too overcome by her eyes to notice the eyebrows. Did I miss something?
3. Probably silly question, but... Are the Flower families elves? Faeries? Do they have pointy ears? (I'm assuming they don't, since exchanging babies would get a little more difficult with pointy ears.)
4. Another probably silly question to people who have read the book shortly ago, but I simply don't remember enough to be convinced of my memory: Do all Faeries grow wings, and the rich ones just cut them off, or have the nobles stopped growing wings through evolution?

So, I hope some of you can help me with these questions and I hope you like the portrait :)

Cheers,
Manuela