Alice in Wonderland: Character Development

  • Alice in Wonderland
    Character Development 
  • Below Alice is shown with the flamingo from the croquet game around her neck. This painting has a certain je ne sais quoi and is one of my favorites. The wild golden flowing hair and orb-like lash-rimmed baby blues of Alice are enchanting. This painting was created during the character development process of A Story Before Bed'fresh new version of Alice in Wonderland. I like to experiment with unusual mediums in my work. In the first layers of this piece I created a raised surface for the body of the flamingo by applying tile caulking and scraping through it with the end of my brush to define each individual feather.

    Texture is a crucial element in all of my paintings. Full of texture, rich detail and utilizing a vibrant color palette, this piece is a prime example of my work. Like many of my other works it took weeks to create. The process starts on cardboard sealed in gesso and a layer of acrylic paint. Then I draw rough sketches with water color pencil, erasing and reworking areas with a damp brush. I lock in the drawing with a sharpie and a layer of fixative. The layers upon layers of paint are each sprayed into place with fixative. Some layers are then coated with gloss medium to ad a smooth translucent layer. Some are left bare so that the water-based gouache beads up on the fixative layer.
  • The painting above was the first in a series of character development paintings for A Story Before Bed's version of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. It is darker than the paintings that followed it in the series and has a real edge. Full of texture, rich in detail with a vibrant color palette, this piece took weeks to create. The creation of this detailed piece on the everyday material of cardboard, aside from giving it an interesting texture, makes the piece effortlessly cool.