Pillaring

Well, between the tail end of Wednesday and getting both kids out of the house on Thursday, I managed to make some real progress on my Caterpillar for my Alice in Wonderland series!

Here's how he has developed so far:

All sketched out!

With the kids packed in the house for the slumber party this was all  I managed. Pathetic. Sigh.

Got the back filled in, working my way to the front.

Filling in those mushrooms. They started to remind me of strawberries at one point. And now I'm craving strawberries. Sigh.

And this is where I quit for tonight. Funny how the light changes to yellow when it's in the evening and the sun has set, compared to how clear it all is with daylight behind me in the earlier in the day photos!

And now it's Friday, and my goal is to get him completely finished today. I think it's an easy stretch (I'm hoping) since the rest went so well! I'm planning on using iridescent paints on him, and once I have him all painted in, I plan on accenting with flowers in complimentary colors to go along with him. I haven't decided whether to have any fun things in smoke around him, or just some wafting a bit.

I also figured out how I am going to do my Cheshire Cat, which is the next Alice painting I have scheduled, and it turns out that I simply cannot picture my Cheshire without my Alice in the picture too. So, the Cheshire Cat painting is going to be larger than I had anticipated (probably a 16x20) and I'm finally going to have to settle on how I want my Alice to look. I was thinking about modeling her after my daughter, but now I'm wondering whether a red-headed Alice would fly over some people's heads or be a turn-off to them in general about the series.

What do you think: Does Alice really need to be blonde?

In other news, I have made a few decisions that will involve a serious ramp up in my Fairy (and dragons!) production, with a goal to have a decent collection of them before the end of March. It's a direction I had already planned on going in a very serious way, but there are several things that have a March 31st deadline that will make a difference for me for the rest of the year. One of these things is me deciding whether or not to just take the plunge and apply for booth-space at the Fairy gathering event (like a renaissance festival, but with fairies in mind - is my understanding of it) about four hours from me in late June. My thoughts were to attend this year and see if it's a good idea. But another thought is, well, why not take the risk? I've done other venues where things haven't panned out, and this isn't overly expensive, so... Maybe I should give it a go instead of just playing with the idea of visiting?

If I do plan on doing that this year, that means ramping up prints, and supplies, and getting my silly display tent fixed (or a new one) and so on. Lots of work. I'm already planning on participating in an October art festival, but this would be one specifically for the fairies, and that would be far more targeted for me.

Decisions, decisions...

Happy Friday!