cover Illustration

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.

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: Painting Preparation

Alice in Wonderland: The Sketch