Final project is supposed to be the most challenging and most involved project of the semester, and it really was. For several reasons. In the beginning – because I wanted it to be special. I didn't just want a scene from the book to be the cover, I wanted an idea, something original, a different spin, a different point of view. So I was looking for that idea for a while. And later on it was challenging because it was simply huge (30x20") and therefore time consuming, and also because I had some technical difficulties while working on it.
"Alice" is such a popular book to illustrate and it's been done million times in all kinds of styles and media, for children and adults. And to get inspired you keep looking through endless examples and at some point your brain gets so saturated with these images that it becomes difficult to produce your own idea.
So I was struggling for a while, making sketches that all seemed too boring and straight forward.
There was one idea that I kind of liked and when I brought it to class I was ready to start working on it. It would be set in NYC.
But my teacher wasn't too excited about it and said why don't I think about it some more. And I did think some more, and some more and eventually just caught myself spacing out. Then I got distracted by a classmate who was asking for an advice on her sketch. Her idea was to use creepy dolls as all the characters but she just piled them up in a meaningless way, so they had no connection to each other. I told her to make an old style family portrait out of them. And that's when my own idea finally surfaced. Somehow "portrait" transformed into picture gallery in my head and became the base of my own illustration. Good thing I actually went to class that day.
The initial sketch looked like this. At first I thought I'd put all the characters into frames, including Alice. (Just realized that Mad Hatter in this sketch looks like a mix of Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat and Simpson's Mr. Burns. :))
But then it seemed too busy plus it occurred to me that Alice should probably be separated from the crazy bunch since she was a visitor. So after several iterations the more or less final sketch looked like this.
Then, as always, I brought it into Photoshop and made a color plan for myself.
The only comment at the class critique was to scale Alice down, so her head is not cut off. So with that in mind I started on my final, full size drawing. Which later was transferred to the illustration board using carbon copy paper. The red outlines you see here is from me pressing really hard on the pencils while transferring the drawing.
Then I drew the outlines with pens, and then my hands-on struggles began. The first challenge was to paint the background without touching the characters. I could probably manage it if the background was more abstract. But I had to have that striped wallpaper, so my solution was masking fluid. Masking fluid is this thick yellowish substance that smells awful and kills your brushes instantly unless you wash them every 5 seconds. You apply it to your drawing in the areas that you want to remain untouched by paint. When it dries it turns into a rubbery substance that you can paint over, and then rub and pull it off carefully after you're done. Works great, but again, smells horrible and it's actually pretty difficult to paint/draw with it. So that took some time to cover all the details. But the main trouble was still ahead.
When I was buying the illustration board, pens were stuck in my head. Well not literally, but almost. I was thinking that I want to have those nice outlines and pens don't work too well on a rough watercolor paper. So I thought I'd get a multimedia board that would be good for both watercolor and pens. Instead I should've been thinking WATERCOLOR, because after all outlines are secondary, and if your main painting sucks, no outline will help you. Unless, of course you just cover everything with a black marker and proclaim it a Dadaist book cover. But, I am not into Dada.
When I looked at my finished painting... of course I didn't like it. Some areas looked ok, but some were pretty bad looking. My teacher told me that if I screwed up with watercolor, I could always cover everything with gouache. Somehow this idea didn't appeal to me. I had no experience with it, plus that just meant I'd have to start a new painting on top of this one. And who knows how that one would turn out. So I decided to go another route and go over watercolor with color pencils. And I am glad I did. I think pencils helped a lot. Besides hiding what I wanted to hide, they added some cool texture and blended well with watercolor. But still, if I were to do it again I would definitely work on good watercolor paper.
Here are some details.
Blue Caterpillar
So I was struggling for a while, making sketches that all seemed too boring and straight forward.
But my teacher wasn't too excited about it and said why don't I think about it some more. And I did think some more, and some more and eventually just caught myself spacing out. Then I got distracted by a classmate who was asking for an advice on her sketch. Her idea was to use creepy dolls as all the characters but she just piled them up in a meaningless way, so they had no connection to each other. I told her to make an old style family portrait out of them. And that's when my own idea finally surfaced. Somehow "portrait" transformed into picture gallery in my head and became the base of my own illustration. Good thing I actually went to class that day.
The initial sketch looked like this. At first I thought I'd put all the characters into frames, including Alice. (Just realized that Mad Hatter in this sketch looks like a mix of Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat and Simpson's Mr. Burns. :))
But then it seemed too busy plus it occurred to me that Alice should probably be separated from the crazy bunch since she was a visitor. So after several iterations the more or less final sketch looked like this.
The only comment at the class critique was to scale Alice down, so her head is not cut off. So with that in mind I started on my final, full size drawing. Which later was transferred to the illustration board using carbon copy paper. The red outlines you see here is from me pressing really hard on the pencils while transferring the drawing.
Then I drew the outlines with pens, and then my hands-on struggles began. The first challenge was to paint the background without touching the characters. I could probably manage it if the background was more abstract. But I had to have that striped wallpaper, so my solution was masking fluid. Masking fluid is this thick yellowish substance that smells awful and kills your brushes instantly unless you wash them every 5 seconds. You apply it to your drawing in the areas that you want to remain untouched by paint. When it dries it turns into a rubbery substance that you can paint over, and then rub and pull it off carefully after you're done. Works great, but again, smells horrible and it's actually pretty difficult to paint/draw with it. So that took some time to cover all the details. But the main trouble was still ahead.
When I was buying the illustration board, pens were stuck in my head. Well not literally, but almost. I was thinking that I want to have those nice outlines and pens don't work too well on a rough watercolor paper. So I thought I'd get a multimedia board that would be good for both watercolor and pens. Instead I should've been thinking WATERCOLOR, because after all outlines are secondary, and if your main painting sucks, no outline will help you. Unless, of course you just cover everything with a black marker and proclaim it a Dadaist book cover. But, I am not into Dada.
So pens worked flawlessly on this smooth surface. Watercolor, no so much. It was pretty painful, I must say. Paper didn't want to absorb the water, and it was difficult to achieve any kind of flat washes. There were puddles, hard edges, weird artifacts and all kinds of things that made the illustration look sloppy. And that's the last thing I wanted. After finishing the background, for a moment I contemplated starting all over on good paper. But there wasn't time for that, so I just kept going, hoping that somehow I will pull it off.
Here are some details.
March Hare
Mad Hatter
White Rabbit
Cheshire Cat
The Queen
So in the end it was a great learning experience. We learn from our mistakes, right? I definitely learned the paper lesson. And it wasn't all painful. Challenging – yes, but otherwise it would be boring. After all, I do this because I like it, not because someone's making me. So I did enjoy the process. Once I had the idea it was really fun working on the details. And drawing with color pencils was interesting. I haven't really used them as a "grown-up" medium, and turned out you can create pretty cool effects. Subtle, but beautiful. I also think I had a little breakthrough with outline. And, of course, it gives you a great sense of satisfaction, when after all these little and not so little disasters and challenges you finally look at your finished work. It may not be perfect, but I still like the way it turned out. For the most part. :)
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