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.

The Scribe

Some of you may already have spotted this painting on my drawing board in a previous post. This was a very simple painting to create because I have already done something very similar for my wife, a painting called 'Autumn Scribe'. The real difference in this is the backdrop which is lifted straight from Lacock Abbey cloisters (home of the Harry Potter films and others).

The Scribe

Watercolour / Gouache

24 x 31cm 

Above is a detail of the window (I know it's most of the painting) just before I started to really pile on the pale yellow gouache. I was going after sunlight illuminating the dust in the old archive and I really think it worked.

New paintings on the drawing board...

I've started work on two of these ideas this week, the lamplighter and the pied piper fox. The others are an old fashioned rag and bone man (these days it seems scrappers looking for metal have taken their place) and a record keeper which will be loosely based on Autumn Scribe.

The top two are for later on but first I have to master multiple hens dancing and the awkward perspective created by medieval buildings on a hill in the pied piper. With the lamplighter the difficulty will be snow in misty London and the soft glow of a gas lamp. I'm ready to accept the challenge!