Return to Oz

Well I am back on the Central Coast of Australia after our trip home to Ireland. I miss everybody already, especially our beautiful granddaughter Lucy. The weather got so wild and windy here on the Coast the other day that it reminded me of the movie "The Wizard of Oz". A personal favourite of mine as a child growing up.

What started out to be a simple idea for this illustration ended up a more complex piece to paint. The challenge were the textures of the gingham dress, wicker basket and the sequin shoes. All textures which I hadn't painted before.

After going through my art supplies, I decided the blue Letraset aquamarker was the best choice for the gingham pattern. It would give me crisp lines and reasonably quick to do. But then after the pattern was applied on the dress, I realised that where the two lines crossed I would need to go back in and redo each cross section!

That I discovered was the easy part, now to tackle the basket weave. I referred to a picture from the movie and studied it for a while. As you can see from the photo below, I tried out a sample section using acrylics on a spare piece of the hot pressed 140 lb watercolour paper. I knew this would work and could outline the wicker weave in darker colours using caran d'ache II watersoluble crayons to make it stand out more. Again very time consuming!

Ok, last challenge, the sequin shoes! I began with light and dark areas, taking in where the light would be coming from. I stippled black sharpie dots in mostly the highlighted areas and then with a white poster paint sharpie, went over the tip of the black sharpie dots. Varying the size of the white dots in clusters gave it a more of a realistic look. Adding in a deep orange here and there over the white dots also added to the effect. I applied this same technique in the form of slightly bigger dots to the wand, to add a bit of contrast.

Close up of basket.

I changed the direction of the Koala's eyes slightly, so he was looking more towards the wand. Adding the finishing touches, highlights to the Koala's eyes.

Close up of Koala.

I am very happy with the end result and glad I persevered with the textures. Sometimes we need to push ourselves in order to grow as artists. Will I be racing to do these textures again? probably not for a while haha! However, if there comes a time that I need to use one of these, at least I know what I have to do now.

How about you? Have you had similar experiences? As always comments are welcomed and encouraged.

Enjoy your weekend, thanks for stopping by.
Until next time, happy creating!