my trip to Wonderland with Alice

Well, I'm so excited with the work that I've produced with Alice in Wonderland!  I didn't know much about the story and it took a bit of time to get familiar with it.  I made loads of designs/compositions, tried new/old techniques and it was the typical artwork story of gradual victories, discovery, wins and loses.  It's funny, but it's not often that myself (and I'm sure other artists) start a project with a clear vision of the end result. We try this, see how it works, nah don't like that, like that bit, let's explore this.... what a ride :-) and as always with art didn't realise just how close I was to the final product, felt like I was a little lost and then a few strokes of colour here and there and it all started to come together.

What I love about these pictures is the gorgeous detail that resulted.  Here's a closeup.... got watercolour, pencil, and computer strokes in this - just makes it delicious :-)

I've been wondering what to post and so I thought some behind the scenes stuff and ideas would be fun.  I really enjoy reading about how others create so hopefully someone out there will enjoy this.

Here's a layout sketch from the pile of work produced in the process.  I've finally arrived at this angle, where we get a good closeup of the cat and see Alice's face as well. You don't want to know the number of angles and layouts I experimented with :-)  So now in this pic, I'm working on establishing the tone, trying to make it look interesting in B/W before we start with colour.  This is important in composition, because the eye travels around the painting bouncing around dark areas and light areas.  It also makes the pictures look so much more enticing if they still look clear in B/W.

 

Below, I'm still playing with layout and composition of the Croquet game. Here I'm tackling layout by solely focusing on silhouettes - a technique that Animation masters use. If the silhouette of a character is clear, then the viewer instantly realises the action/moment/identity of the character and doesn't have to ponder too much - the image works and captures the attention quickly.  The Croquet game was so full of these little moments and I wanted to capture it all, so I had to cheat a little and put in some fun moments from different time slots - Alice laughing at the absurdity of her flamingo, the white rabbit which comes in later in the scene is added, the Queen of Hearts gets into her tirade later into the scene as well but by this time Alice is not happy.  I wanted to capture the chaos, the Queen's anger, the King keeping the peace, the hedgehogs walking off, the white rabbit, the small time when Alice is happy and the guests all playing for themselves without care for taking turns, the crazy unlevel Croquet playing pitch.  There's also a little bit from the very beginning of the chapter, one of the gardeners has forgotten to paint a white rose red.  Imagine it. Imagine if the Queen saw that. What chaos :-) and it's actually quite a troubling scene for Alice - how do you make a happy image out of that :-)

Well I'm glad I've posted this.... it's been fun.  Looking forward to sharing more soon.  May see you at the Handmade Expo this Saturday or on Facebook. 

Enjoy :-)