Alice in Wonderland - illustration

Alice in Wonderland - detail
click on the image to see it larger

Things suddenly got busy at the end of this month, with my City of Craft application (cross fingers for me!) and a few work things. But ever since I received an email about it I wanted to create some artwork for a blog called Uncovered Cover Art.

The idea is to create cover artwork for a book (and design if you can manage it). I had thought of Alice in Wonderland, but of course so had lots of other people. But it's amazing how varied the results can be when different artists approach the same project. In a way, that's part of the fun of it. And then one evening an image popped into my head which led to some sketches and I decided to go with it.

This is the full composition but I didn't have enough time left to do the design:

Alice in Wonderland - click on the image to see it larger

I've been working on digital illustrations for some time now and decided I would work on a new style for this project. I did the line art in Illustrator and was happy with it and brought it in to Photoshop to add colour and texture. But after a very long day working on it I suddenly didn't like it at all.

When this happens, the best thing is just to go back to the stage where you used to like it. So I went back to the line art, which I edited a bit, and started colouring all over again. This time I wanted to try a limited palette and use more flat areas of colour (inspired by linocuts). There's some texture but I tried to stop before it was over-worked.

 Here's a comparison. Detail of the first version:

And the updated version:

I love yellow and grey. Anyway, I do like the final art and was so happy to see it added to the blog today - the last day! There is a dazzling array of talent on this blog, quite intimidating, so it's an honour to be among them. And I also feel like I really benefited from this opportunity to develop my digital style.

Thanks to the creator of the blog, Heidi Kellenberger for a brilliant concept executed really well.