Children of the Forest

The Marriage is a Work of Art show has come to a close and my painting "Children of the Forest" has gone to its new home. I haven't made a process post in a while, so I thought I would share how this painting came together.

When we were invited to exhibit in the Marriage show I wanted to come up with a way that Vinod and I could tie our work together other than the incidental ties our art has as a result of our relationship as artists over the past 20 (!) years. I didn't want to just hang whatever it was that we had been working on lately and call it a day. We don't really collaborate on artwork other than offering each other critiques and we definitely don't work on the same painting together. (I don't know how Leo and Diane Dillon did it!)

Last fall, Vinod had painted a personal piece called "The Green Man." I was looking at it hanging on the wall in our studio one evening and decided that I could do a companion piece that would complement his painting and form the centerpiece of our wall at the Marriage is a Work of Art show.

"Children of the Forest" embodies many of the themes I explore in my work: mythology, folk tales, and nature and animals seen through a fantasy lens.

I knew the story I wanted to tell, but as I drew, other elements I did not plan in advance developed organically, like her flower "heart."

When we moved into our house two years ago, we set up our studio in a room facing our backyard which is adjacent to a woodsy green belt. Squirrels and many species of birds visit our feeders and bird bath visible from the window in front of my desk. This is the first time we've lived in a house with a window looking out onto so much wildlife activity. I love it. For "Children of the Forest" I decided to paint some of the birds that visit us I and picked a dogwood tree like the one in our yard for the dryad.

A little over a day into the painting.

A butterfly was one of the unplanned elements that revealed itself to me while I was drawing, and I decided to make it a monarch. Growing up in Michigan I would see monarchs and I remember a trip we took to look for them at Point Peele National Park, which is a rest stop for migrating butterflies.

A close up of the dryad's face.

Almost finished...

Deciding the crop of the finished painting using the mat.

This is pretty typical of the way my table looks during a project.

The title of this painting comes from a book I was referring to for bark textures, moss and general forest imagery called Secrets of the Old Growth Forest. Most of the time I was working I had the book open to a page with a photo of the massive trunk of a cedar tree. When I was finished and it was time for me to come up with a title for my piece, I happened to glance over at the open book and saw that the chapter title was "Children of the Forest." I thought it expressed the theme of my painting perfectly.

The final piece.

The framed paintings side by side.

Crowd Sorcery Sketches: The Villain Khaos

It's time to reveal the last group of character development sketches I did for Crowd Sorcery: Khaos!  

 

The Villain: Khaos

Created by Brooke E., age 11

“The spirit of a wicked sorcerer who was killed in a huge battle that wiped out his monsters, he lives in a huge, ancient cave—a shrine for worshipping Mael-Koth, the pagan god of death.”

Khaos actually appeared in the very first part of "The Girl Who Writes the Future" but not in his "true" form. He was described by his creator as "disturbingly handsome" and Fred tells us that he has "dark hair...slicked back from a face so handsome it might have been that of an angel –– except for its cruelty." I had my work cut out for me! Help me, Ayami Kojima.* You're my only hope!

When I talk about designing characters I discuss how I work on the face first so that I can feel like I know the character better before I continue the design. I usually start sketching from my imagination, but if I get stumped, or even if a face is going in a direction I like but I want to make it more distinct, I will sometimes turn to reference for inspiration.

Round one of Khaos sketches.

I did this first round of sketches from imagination. I already had a general idea of how I wanted Khaos to look and I was exploring attitude and expression. But I wanted to draw more tangible facial features, so with some reference of faces in hand I refined the character design. I also fixed his bone crown so it'd look less like it was made of french fries!

Round two, taking features I liked best from round one and refining them.

Artists often have a sort of default face that they draw. Although our characters may be distinguishable from one another, there's a shorthand many of us tend to use when drawing facial features. To break away from the reliance on those stylistic tropes it's good to look carefully at real facial features from time to time and concentrate on the way faces are made up of an interesting variety of shapes.

The final drawing for the illustration of Khaos with his creepy crawlies.

"The Girl Who Writes the Future" by Frederic S. Durbin has just concluded its run with Part Six in Cricket Magazine's May 2015 issue. To follow the adventures of these characters pick up some issues at the bookstore. If you missed the earlier chapters of the story you can now read the whole thing online on Cricket's Chatterbox message board or follow the instructions for downloading the digital editions here.

*Ayami Kojima draws and paints what one might describe as disturbingly beautiful people. She is well known for her art for the Castlevania video game series.

Hey, It's a Goblin

Looks pretty shifty...