Monday, July 5, 2010

The Wizard of Oz - Pencils


After six months...I'm finally getting serious!  And after two years of this idea and composition* sitting around, at last it's being realized.  This is a big sucker, measuring 30" x 40", by far the biggest image I've done in 15 years at least, maybe ever.  I'm more a 11" x 17" kinda guy.  A little daunting, but if you're going to do, then do it!

This is the projected transfer, my studio isn't quite big enough to really handle this size, so there was a bit of trickery to get this to work - a lot of laying on my belly and drawing it out on the floor!  I got everything transferred, and began to redraw it with the heavier pencils.  In couple of places, I needed a complete redraw, the Good Witch's face, little troupe Dorothy's face, and the Scarecrow.  It got a little scary, completely erasing the transfer and freehanding back in the features (with the help of reference photos) but everything came out better in the end.  Those were the major fixes, but nearly everything got extra attention after the redraw - doing the practice sketches, and then the color comps helped so much to inform the final.

Overall, I'm really happy with the likeness, and it's ready to get prepped for paint!

*Longtime readers who know the original drawing from around Xmas of '08 may notice some changes, I did find a better image of the Cowardly Lion to use, and I added in some foliage to homage Munchkin-land, and created a new solution for the bricks, kind of a warped spiral, based on the beginning of the Yellow Brick Road, when Dorothy begins her journey...

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