Oz

A catch up with all of my Oz related illustrations this past year. Some of these are super recent so I show no signs of stopping yet!

I've been wanting to draw something from Return to Oz for ages. It's actually my favourite Oz related movie - I can take or leave the Judy Garland movie to be honest, I don't know if that's controversial but it's the book of the Wizard of Oz that captivated me rather than the movie version. I grew up watching Return to Oz and I think it's what gave me such a love of horror as scenes like the Wheelers and Mombi's hallway of decapitated heads both terrified and enthralled me! And as an adult I was so excited when I picked up Baum's books for the first time and realised they were much more in keeping with Return To Oz rather than the overly saccharine MGM movie. I want to draw more from Return to Oz at some point, but here's a start! Princess Mombi and a few of her heads.

After I first read The Wizard of Oz I drew the scene of Dorothy meeting the Scarecrow and it's what catapulted me down this whole art journey I've been on these past two years. My style has developed a lot since then as I was still very much finding my feet back then, and it's a scene I wanted to revisit. I'd love to know which version you prefer! I had to make references to the Scarecrow being Fiyero because this is me drawing it after all!

And I figured I'd draw the following scene where they meet Boq the Tin Man! He was a lot more of a challenge to draw than I realised he'd be, and whilst I originally wanted to do my own take I did end up taking a lot of inspiration from Denslow's original illustrations. Most of the difficulty came because a tin man would obviously be very rigid, whereas my art style is much more fluid and I wanted him to look stuck, not stiff and lifeless.

Drawing Wicked characters is my happy comfort place. I've been playing around with trying to give Fiyero his blue diamond tattoos he has in the books to try and give him back some of his cultural identity that they took away in the musical, but it's difficult not to make them look crap.

I can't believe it took me this long to draw this scene honestly!

This is a really old drawing that I did for Inktober of 2019, and I've been wanting to colour it for ages and finally got around to it last week! So this literally brings everything bang up to date. I don't know if you can even really tell, but I've been trying with a slightly more painterly style as my colouring process was starting to feel a little formulaic and dull. It's always really intrigued me with how many story possibilities there are with Fiyero turning into a Scarecrow and how that would effect him, his relationships, and how he interacts with the world around him. But unfortunately no one else seems to care about anything beyond "Gelphie" and I'm not a writer, so I just try and touch on it in my illustrations as best I can.

Inside my sketchbook

I haven't been posting here much because I've got so much art to post and catch you up on that it's a little overwhelming tbh! I've been feeling similarly about Instagram - I hear everyone say about how it's good for engagement to post every day so I saved a whole bunch of work up, but I can't say posting every day has made a jot of difference to my engagement whatsoever, and being less spontaneous about it all has sucked all the fun from my account. I was scrolling back through my feed and I honestly think I was doing better before I started overanalysing it, so once I've caught up it'll be back to basics for me! Sharing things I'm excited about as soon as I've created them.

So this is going to be a bit of a catch up post!

I'm still getting used to trying to draw backgrounds and perspective and stuff, but also in a more simplified way. I don't know if it's because I draw realism as well, but when I draw a location I tend to get caught up in all of the little details rather than catching a mood or energy of a place and it's something I'm trying to work on as it's a style I really admire. I also think it would be a really nice practice to get into for my travels too. I drew this from a photograph and I was quite pleased with how it came out!

I originally wanted to digitalise this, but I also drew it so long ago that I've kind of lost all motivation and would rather work on new ideas ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ When the world first went into lockdown a year ago (OMG!) I had a ton of ideas, more illustrations than I could keep up with and so many that I wanted to colour digitally and turn into "proper" works, but I ended up with such a backlog that it began to feel like a chore and I've given up on a lot of them for now at least. I at least painted this one so the idea is still kind of there! I had wanted to incorporate some of their key lyrics into their clothing and background.

I kept working at my ballpoint illustrations, and here's one of Mika I did last summer before I went to Kyoto. Stations in Japan have all different stamps and I love how they looked in my sketchbook.

I realised I never drew the Cowardly Lion! I'm very out of practice with drawing animals so they're always a challenge for me.

Of course I've still been drawing Aaron.

And the Joker too! I tried before to colour the Joker's makeup after I drew it, and last time I used Copics which turned out way too vivid and kind of killed the drawing. I still really wanted to try the idea though, so I used coloured pencils this time which I think worked out much better! And I did the blood in gouache to make it really stand out.

I had this idea of a friendly bear for a while, I kind of want to put it on a shirt? 'Goddag' is just a way of saying Hello in Danish, I'm trying to incorporate more of it into my work to show a bit more of my cultural identity instead of defaulting to English all of the time.

It was autumn and I wanted to draw something cozy! This is like, my ideal day to me. Books, candles, music, cookies, and a raging storm outside. If you zoom right in the books on the shelf are some of my favourites I grew up with!

Branching out in my musicals, ey? XD Les Mis is one of my original musical obsessions way back and I wanted to show it a little love. I tried to blend Enjolras's stage and movie costumes - I had to do the vest because it's iconic, but I prefer the movie's pants and blond wig.

I have a whole bunch of Oz illustrations too, but I'll add them to their own post!