And here she is! Alice in all her bright, mischievous glory!
Alice in Wonderland: Final Painting
Alice in Wonderland: Painting
Finally, it’s time for painting. I don’t have much to say about my process. I keep things fairly simple. No special tricks or magic tools, just a bunch of familiar steps built over years of painting practice.
Most of my paint is Windsor and Newton Professional Acrylic. I do have a couple of tubes of Galleria (Windsor and Newton’s student range) as well as some Atelier tubes, but for the way I work, the Windsor and Newton Professional range feel the best.
For brushes I use a large, square to wash in the background, but the rest of the painting is done alternating between three differently sized round brushes. As for the actual technique, I can best describe it as layering on thin washes of colour and softly (but quickly) blending lights into darks until I get the desired gradient.
In future, I would love to video the whole process, but I don’t really have the right setup for it. For now, I can offer a photographic journey.
Next up: The Final Painting
Alice In Wonderland: Painting Preparation
With the sketch done, it’s time to prepare the canvas for painting. Word of wisdom, buy the canvas before deciding on what size to make your sketch. I, of course, did not work with this sort of wisdom and alas, when I went canvas buying, could not get the exact dimensions that I needed. The best canvas I could find was a little wider than the sketch, but not quite as tall.
With some tracing paper, a pair of scissors and ample floor space, I got to work making adjustments to my composition. Satisfied with the new positions, it was time to transfer. Another feat accomplished thanks to tracing paper. I make sure to put only the main lines down. They are fairly light on the canvas, and serve as a guide for the initial layers of colour.
Speaking of colour, I need to make some decisions on my palette choice. I paint out a few quick colour studies to get a feel for the atmosphere. For me, the yellow one best brings out the kind of vibe I’m aiming for.
Lastly, I prepare a reference board.
And now it’s time to paint.
Alice in Wonderland: The Sketch
After hashing out the idea for my Alice illustration in a few rough doodles, I jump right into the final sketch. This sketch is something of an exploratory process. I’ve got the basic idea of how I want the image to look, but I haven’t worked out the finer details yet. There is a lot of back and forth with erasing and drawing and erasing again, particularly in areas like the hands where getting the pose just right can be tricky
The sketch is A3 in size, done on an A2 sheet of Canson Artists Series Drawing Paper, 220GSM. I used a 6B graphite pencil for the entire sketch. I find I can get both really light and really dark with 6B pencils and don’t have any need to switch between pencils. The final trusty tool is the kneaded eraser.
Here are some shots of the process with the final illustration at the end.
Next up: Transferring the sketch to canvas and getting ready for painting!
Alice in Wonderland: Initial Sketches
When I started my Alice in Wonderland painting, I had three goals in mind. I wanted it to be vibrant. I wanted it to be busy, but mostly, I wanted it to be mine. I didn’t want my painting to be another iteration of Disney’s Alice (a glorious Alice at that) and in order to steer clear of those prominent influences, I had a few choices to make:
First, I read the book. Surprisingly this was something I had never actually done before and as a writer, well… guys, this story has no beginning, middle, nor end. It is a psychedelic stream of consciousness told through a series of puns (many of which I likely missed due to time period differences and whatnot.)
But as an artist? It’s a candy-bowl full of visual delights!
The first thing I decided to do was focus on the animals. The book has A LOT of animals. If an animal exists, Alice probably had a chat with it. I considered the human characters, but ultimately decided that I wasn’t up for the challenge of trying to better Disney on those. It is close to impossible for me to think about the Queen of Hearts and NOT see a tiny lady with a giant head. Animals would also much better fit my desire for something bright and lighthearted.
I knew I wanted to have Alice in the middle with rose bushes and animals around her.
My first thumbnail had her looking timid and scared, but the Alice in the books is never frightened.
My second attempt is better, but her expression still isn’t right. She’s not scared anymore. She looks like she’s in awe of Wonderland. Which, once again, she isn’t’. Mostly Alice waltzes around Wonderland trading snarky comments with everyone she meets. I did like the positioning of this thumbnail however and used it to further plot everything else.
I tried a couple of poses with Alice before coming to the one I liked. At first, she still has too much of the awe/scared thing going.
Finally I clue in to the fact that I need her cheeky. Sassy. Shes confident and strong and none of my previous attempts were carrying that message at all. Behold, the final Alice:
I did some quick sketches to figure out my version of the Cheshire cat and some studies of a few other bits and pieces, but that was pretty much it. My preparation for Alice was a lot of thinking and three pages of scribbling.
Next up: The Complete Sketch
A Long Overdue Update
It certainly has been a while since I last made a post. I had many good intentions, but was very swiftly overwhelmed with everything I wanted to do and it inevitably led me to a downward spiral in which almost nothing got done.
But life is a series of falling down and getting back up again and here I am, getting back up.
And to begin, here is a small update of what I have been working on.
Art:
Most of last year was dedicated to Sculpture. Primarily, I was making bonsai pots out of concrete, some more artistically leaning than others. I set up an Etsy shop and even sold a few, but it was a venture that came with a few problems that I’ve found hard to reconcile. Concrete is heavy. It’s also pretty fragile. The weight makes for really high shipping fees and when you have a product that needs to ship all the way from Australia, well, it gets expensive.
I did also experience breakages on items that I thought were really well wrapped. I seriously underestimated the amount of cushioning my delicate, chunky, babies would need. Luckily, those were sent to my parents and I didn’t have any unfortunate customer care situations to manage. It did however show me how easily I could end up with an unfortunate mishap.
I do love sculpture and I thoroughly enjoy mixing it up with bonsai and other plants, but after giving it a year, I think its safe to say that it’s an activity best left as a hobby for now.
So where does that leave me and my Fine Arts degree? Spiralling in self doubt and existential dread. I did a lot of that. It seriously messed with my productivity. It took a stern pep talk from myself, and a really long time, to pull myself out of that mess and come up with a plan. A project. Something.
Enter my saviour: Alice in Wonderland.
I decided to choose a book, any book, and make a cover illustration for it. No pressure. No time limit. Just me and the art and however long it takes. I am so glad that I chose Alice.
This painting has giving me my confidence back. It’s bright and colourful and it makes me happy. When I look at it, it reminds me that yes I can do this. I do make good art.
And thanks to Alice I have a sudden wealth of new ideas just waiting to be painted. Of course, I need to finish her still. She has a good couple of hours left to go, but they’re hours I’m excited to get to.
I haven’t taken a tonne of progress shots, but I will be sharing what I have in a future post.
Writing:
Last year I attempted to do another round of 12 short stories in 12 months. I got 6 stories into it before I realised it was taking too much of my time and seriously impacting the progress on my current novel WIP. It was a really tough call to make, but I made the decision to quit the challenge half way and save what was left of my crumbling sanity.
With the short stories no longer a priority I threw myself into Draft Two. It took a lot of self bribery (in the way of chocolate and clothes) but I got. It. Done.
Unfortunately, it still wasn’t done done.
I am currently deep into edits of draft three and have made it to 50000 words. It is going slower than I had hoped and with the current state of the world, I am finding it increasingly difficult to get much done. Not to mention that I have suddenly become a quarantine-Home-school mom and what time I did have has suddenly shrunk to almost nothing.
But the book is coming along. I am making progress. I even have an excerpt to prove it. 😉
Excerpt:
“What does it do?” Autumn heard herself ask. She could not look away from the candle. She couldn’t stop the gaping pit of dread that grew inside of her.
She knew what the candle did. Of course she did. This was a gift like all the other gifts, made to fix her. Only, Zanele had never given her a gift before. Zanele had never even hinted that she cared about Autumn’s lack of manifestation. Zanele was a safe witch.
But not anymore. Just like the rest of them, Zanele was here presenting a gift. Like the rest of them, Zanele wanted her to change.
Zanele began to explain the magic and the more she spoke, the more the pit of dread grew.
“At it’s core, it’s a spell of waking, but there’s a lot more to it. It has threads for breaking barriers and some others to uncover hidden things. And the last bit, the really tricky one, is a thread of life giving. It took me months to work out the intricacies, otherwise I might have gotten this to you sooner.”
This was complicated magic. Difficult magic. Not entirely sanctioned magic. Waking? Life giving? Autumn swallowed.
“I can’t take this.”
Autumn reached out and pushed the candle away from herself. Just the brief touch made her feel like she might throw up.
“Of course you can.” Zanele pushed the candle back. “I’m giving it to you.”
Autumn’s eyes shot up to Zanele’s. She stared, wide eyed. “Is this even… legal?”
“I might be treading some fine lines but, “ Zanele shrugged. “This is for your Affinity, I don’t think anyone would object.” She leaned in close then, a spark of laughter back in her eyes. “Just don’t light it in a graveyard. You might wake up the inhabitants and then we will be in trouble.”
Autumn’s eyes went wide. “It can do that?”
Zanele pushed away from the counter, she laughed. “Not without a very elaborate spell, it can’t.”
Autumn was not convinced. She stared at the candle, horror plain on her face. Zanele spoke softly.
“It’s fine, Autumn. Light it, focus on your core. The only thing that will awaken is your Affinity. I promise you that.” She pressed her shirt straight. “But I do need to get going. Message me if you need to talk more, okay?”
“Okay.”
Acton Art 