Little Paintings for my Kickstarter 'The Wind in the Willows' Book Campaign

 I feel like I'm blowng the dust off this blog, polishing my spectacles, and thumbing through its pages to see where I last posted... December 2020?!!! Oh dear. In explanation I use this blog to post my thoughts and process on painting, and Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for promotion. Over the last year and a half I've been so busy, I've barely been able to look around and post something meaningful, until now.

As part of my Kickstarter campaign to gather pre-orders for my fully illustrated edition of 'The Wind in the Willows' (take a look), I have been creating 15 small watercolours for those lucky backers who snapped them up in the first few days of the Kickstarter launch. I also managed to make a time lapse video painting Ratty, start to finish. 

 

Many people ask me about my technique, hopefully this video will give you some pointers. At the beginning I start with my basic linework (which has been slightly erased with a putty rubber). Then I add an underpainting of cobalt blue and cadmium red mixed together. Those colours create a dull violet, perfect for cast shadows on a warm day (complimentary to yellow ochre). Once the underpainting is dry enough, I add local colours and then start to build up deeper tones and details all over. Lots of work is required on the fur to give Ratty a nice texture, but I have to be careful not to overwork his shirt and trousers, which is easy to do with transparent watercolour. The red chequer for the basket liner is left until last, because I want to build up all the tonal values first and then let it influence the layer of red watercolour. I do this with all patterned fabrics.

Here are the other character paintings, all taken from scenes in the book:

Like Summer Tempests Came His Tears

'Like Summer Tempests Came His Tears' watercolour and gouache , 24 x 31cm

Another 'The Wind In The Willows' illustration, finished this morning and shared with the online world! Here Badger gives Toad some stern words, criticising his past behaviour and blaming him for the loss of Toad Hall. However, he also offers hope when he comes to explain there is a secret tunnel into Toad's old residence which they can use to flush out the wicked stoats, ferrets and weasels. Good old Mr Badger, I say!

I had plenty of fun adding the extra details to create a further narrative in the image, such as the oars above the fireplace and the framed map of the river and it's tributaries on the wall. Also, please take the time to read the newspaper headline, which harks back to the adventures of Toad.

There are also cameos for my Grandmother's caddy box on the mantlepiece and the obligatory cornishware mug on the table.

WIP 'The Last Train'

The Last Train WIP

Back to my challenging painting today. Originally I thought I would show the scene, of Toad hitchin' a ride on a steam train, under an overcast sky. For some reason I decided to attempt a cloudy sky at the end of the day, when the Sun is about to drop and blue reflected light is starting to take over just for a brief period until the Sun totally disappears below the horizon. Simple enough, until you factor in the platform lamps, which must be bright enough to stand out against the oncoming gloom but not be so powerful as to outshine the other two natural light sources.

As I said, this one is very challenging but is also an excellent opportunity to learn, which for me is the whole point. So back to it...

Sketch 'Like Summer Tempests Came His Tears'

My sketch for 'Like Summer Tempests Came His Tears'. Badger has some stern words for Toad as the four friends formalise a plan to retake Toad Hall.

It was a lot of fun trying to visualise the inside of Ratty's home. I'm hoping once the colour work begins I can really play with the warm light from the fireplace and how it might cast interesting shadows on the wall and floor.

Mr Toad In Court

'Mr Toad In Court'

watercolour and gouache

51 x 39cm

Last week I completed this complicated scene from 'The Wind In The Willows'. Mr Toad has been brought in front of a judge to hear his sentence for stealing a car and driving recklessly.

My rough drawing. Compared with the finished painting you can see I made some changes, especially on the faces.

I followed all the usual procedures on the creation of this illustration. Thumbnails, rough preparatory drawing, transferred pencil onto watercolour paper, sepia underpainting, watercolour work and finally gouache finishing touches. Nothing out of the ordinary. Therefore, in this post, I have chosen to highlight some of the details in the painting that are not immediately obvious, but I feel make a difference in how you read the image.

A spiky friendship

I've 'raised the bar'

Both my wife and myself make cameo appearances in this scene. I appear to have changed profession, and Suzanne now hangs out with hedgehogs.

I detest littering.

The discarded 'Times' newspaper headline reads MR TOAD ON TRIAL. Note the burnt out matches on the table used to light the table candles when the sun drops.

Vicky is not amused.

Queen Victoria is quite shocked at Toad's sentence (or is she showing disapproval?). Also the human and owl judge have their own painted portrait in the corner, just above peeling wallpaper.

More illustrations than you can shake a stick at...

'Hey, Toad, look over here.'

Recently I have been updating my new website www.chris-dunn.co.uk . Please take some time to browse the site, as it provides links back into archive of this blog and highlight blog posts in relation to individual illustrations.

The most recent of updates is the full collection of 'The Wind In The Willows' illustrations I have painted for Guomai, a Chinese publisher. There is quite a number and I will be adding more in the next year, as I illustrate more scenes from the book. To see the collection, click here.

The Wind In The Willows

Over the past 3 months, and in-between other jobs, I have been working on a collection of 30 watercolour illustrations for 'The Wind In The Willows', to be published by Guomai in China.

Mole's house is getting a bit of TLC

It's a dream job for me, Kenneth Grahame's book has been a rich source of inspiration over the years. I just wish I had more time available to me to produce large illustrations instead of mainly spots. I think I will keep adding to this image bank in the hope I can get another book published in the future containing even more artwork.

Ratty sets out in the winter air to find his friend

You can see many more of these illustrations on my new website - click here

'Barging Through' Rough Drawing

'Mason's Joy' is causing a lot of disharmony on the canal.

This will be the final painting in my series of animal characters influenced by 'The Wind In The Willows'.

The setting is based on Horton bridge, on the Kennett And Avon canal near Devizes. In order to get the appropriate photographic reference, I took a very nice five minute drive, with my son Arthur, down to the bridge. Then with my two year-old in a harness on my bag, I trooped around the tow path with my camera in hand. While I took photographs, Arthur commentated on his surroundings - he especially liked the boats but he didn't think much to the police-badger.

'Evening On The Lake'

I managed to finish this watercolour, 'Evening On The Lake', last night. Having said that when I got into the studio this morning I realised I had missed some whiskers for the characters in the immediate foreground.

That toad has just failed his driving test.

As you can see, I have included lots of overlapping elements in the painting in order to give a sense of movement and watery chaos. Based on their current positions I think just about every boat has the potential to crash into another vessel and not every person at the helm is paying due care and attention. There are also ducks and geese swooping in-between the maze of sails and steaming funnels - I find birds incredibly useful in breaking up a composition.

The overall colour gradually became very N.C Wyeth, not by design, the background just seemed to demand a rich golden haze as I started to build up the fells and tree lined banks. This did mean I kept washing varied amounts of cadmium yellow and yellow ochre continually on top of one another, which made the soft pencil on the top edge slightly bleed into the sky. Next time I'll go back to the trusty 3H made by Derwent (how very appropriate).

A Quarter Past One On Platform Ten Pt .3

For the first part of this post click here, and for the second part click here.

Finally I was up and running with my brushes (not literally, although I do have wheels on my studio chair so the option is there if needed).

Under-paintings and then some.

As is my wont, I began with an under-painting. However, just to be difficult, I began with payne's grey for the station and engine and then moved onto sepia for the characters. This was to re-enforce the difference between the cool station colours and the warmly coloured characters.

After that initial stage, it was a case of blocking in colours to work out the types of clothing. Every now and then I had to grab new reference (thank goodness for Downton Abbey screenshots) but mostly I had a reasonably clear idea of costumes beforehand.

A series of WIP shots taken over a period of 10 days

You'll notice in the 'works in progress' photos I tended to concentrate on the foreground characters more than the background. Traditional thinking would be to do this the opposite way, but I found it easier to focus on the main elements first before I lost enthusiasm with the painting and ended up slacking on my quality control. There's nothing worse than a fantastic scene with a poorly painted character sticking out like a sore thumb. Also there were so many elements that really I'm not sure it mattered where I began so long as I eventually finished it.

Speaking of which here is the final painting.

A Quarter Past One On Platform Ten
Watercolour & Gouache
50 x 92

 

3 weeks work in total and my biggest watercolour painting of this series so far.
 

A Quarter Past One On Platform Ten Pt .2

For the first part of this post click here.

After working out a basic, almost abstract, composition for the passengers and laying that on top of the station rough, it was time to work on each character individually. I had the intention of re-using characters from previous paintings and also introducing some that would then feature in their own personal painting. However I had no definite ideas so as usual I just started to draw in the hope something satisfactory would appear.

The full pencil rough

I'd better make clear that in order to produce the final pencil rough I printed out the initial rough at a larger size and then transferred that image onto a fresh piece of cartridge. I knew it would be a lot of work but you can't create a large painting like this on dodgy foundations (that's a favourite saying in my house).

Once I had the characters fleshed out I then put the image into Photoshop and had a play with the tonal values.

Photoshopped (is that a word?) tonal study

With the tonal study I tried to expand the tonal range on the characters and reduce the levels on the train in the hope the characters would be brought forward. This was all well and good until I realised I needed to darken the background roof to accentuate the light train in front. So now my tonal order was (front to back) dark/light medium/medium. I wasn't too confident in making the difference between all three of these tones clear in the final painting but decided (as you will see) to use a blurring effect on the roof to make sure it receded and a light glaze of white gouache on the train to bring the characters forward.

Tonal Study Detail: The badger, signing an autograph, happens to be the famous opera singer Madame Albani from a previous painting. In the background you can see an otter soldier holding his child - a reference to William Powell Frith.

Who knew the fox was a black market salesman. You might recognise the hedgehog too.

I sent this rough to my client, Olivier Souille, and he asked me to revise the bottom left section (see below)

Detail of the section in need of revision.

Olivier thought it looked clunky (my word, not his) and I agreed with his observation. I think I was so desperate to add the barrel, box, bench etc that I lost interest with the characters and how they interacted with whole image.

Before I heard from Olivier I had already sized up and transferred to rough onto stretched watercolour paper so I had to rework the area on a piece of tracing paper until I was happy and only then could it be added to the final pencil drawing.

Final Pencil Detail On Watercolour Paper: You can see I removed the bench and station paraphernalia and added more porter mice, a stoat and two young foxes. (Sorry about the poor picture quality, from here on the rest of the shots were taken with a camera phone )

The final pencil drawing ready to be painted

Detail: That little chap is awestruck.

Feast - Finished Watercolour Painting!

'Feast' was a BIG job. Some of you may already have seen the previously posted progress shots but I thought for this post I would collate everything so you can see the whole development from pencil to finished artwork.

First off I produced this detailed sketch which I extrapolated from a series of thumbnails. I'd like to show the thumbnails too but I have a habit of using them for scrap and they tend to disappear in the recycling bin well before I remember I'll possibly need them again. The sketch below is the largest drawing I have produced for the series so far and believe me, it had to be. There was a lot of erasing, re-positioning and general jiggery-pokery involved before I had a composition I liked. I always find a table-based scene particularly hard because, well, there's a table in it! They get in the way of the action, are often much wider than you think and not very exciting to draw. To counteract these issues I raised the eye-level to suggest the viewer is stood behind the mouse and hare looking down on the raucous feast (Rockwell never struggled).

A lot of the characters are taken from my previous paintings and some of them like the hares and squirrel are bound to make there own solo debut in future paintings. Also note the three distinctive social cliques formed by the guests - top left - the greedy bunch, top right - the liquid diners, and bottom - the polite company.

After the sketch was completed and approved by my wonderful client, Olivier, I moved into Photoshop to produce a small tonal study. I knew in advance how the scene should work, dark background, light middle ground and a slightly silhouetted foreground badger, but I thought it prudent to develop the study considering the amount of time I would spend painting especially if I were to make mistakes and find myself re-working the final image.

Tonal study completed and on to stretched watercolour paper. I traced down an enlarged print out and got to work on a light sepia under-painting (predictable I know). Then added local colours and started to build up and refine from there until I finally added gouache on the whiskers and highlights.

 

I deliberately chose a scene that contained objects and characters I had painted before so, armed with reference, I could confidently render every aspect. The next large painting might be more challenging but as this was my first I played it safe. Oh and I've always wished to depict a feast after reading so many wonderful foody descriptions in the Redwall books by Brian Jacques.

Feast

Watercolour & Gouache

50 x 40cm 

'Feast' Work In Progress

Here are a couple of shots taken on my phone as I'm working on my latest painting.

I'm now slowly making my way anti clockwise around the painting by concentrating on each character in turn. Once I've done the badger then I will take a look at the table and then the background. After that it's a case of pushing the values.

The Orator

 The Orator

Watercolour / Gouache

24 x 31cm

Hot off the easel, watercolour painting finished and scanned this morning! 

I had a bit of trouble with the values in this painting. I have attempted to increase them on Mr Toad while letting the background level out slightly in the hope that the main character will stand out sufficiently. Now, that's not easy to do when you have an open fireplace crackling merrily in the background as it forces you to develop contrasts so the flame look suitably bright. A lesson learned I think.

In terms of process I did the usual sepia watercolour under-painting, glazed local colour then worked the values in watercolour. Finally I added mostly highlights with gouache but I did darken his velvet lapels with a deep brown umber gouache paint.

The Orator - Work In Progress

I have to put this aside for the next few days but I finally think it's starting to come together.

The Orator Work In Progress

Chris what are you working on at the moment? Why haven't you be posting regularly? Do toads drink whiskey? All these questions can be answered by the image below.