alice to a tea.
inspired by alice’s adventures in wonderland.
"alice to a tea."
gouache & india ink painting inspired by lewis carroll's alice's adventures in wonderland.
"alice to a tea." was the very first faerie tale feet painting i ever created. somewhere (actually, it's in my spongebob squarepants folder by my drafting table now that i think about it), is a piece of scrap paper with all sorts of crazy ideas on it. fairy tale stained glass windows? watches of famous book characters? shakespeare illustrations? and FEET. faerie tale feet. because i love shoes and how much they tell us about a person. especially combined with posture. and i love patterns and colours-- and of course, i love books and stories. so i started exploring my all-time four favourite stories, the basis of my multi-edition book collections: alice's adventures in wonderland, the wonderful wizard of oz, peter pan, and cinderella. and those were our first four paintings.
so for alice’s painting, i didn't do as much research as i would now for a faerie tale feet piece. i did the story shapes that immediately came to mind. the tea party. the queen of hearts. the white rabbit & his pocket watch. & the "drink me" tag from when she shrinks and grows and cries and oh how that scene in the disney movie stresses me out!
so please enjoy the few moments of the process i captured years ago creating our very first faerie tale feet piece:
we always start with our shoe/posture drawing and story icon pattern drawing on tracing paper... which gets taped down to illustration board and re-traced so that we leave some transfer paper lines behind to paint inside of...
painting the background colour first around all the story icons can take upwards of 7 hours in one sitting. the background colour informs the vibe of the rest of the piece and kind of helps decide our colour scheme as we go along filling in the background shapes.
once the background has been painted in, i'll mix up one gouache colour at a time and start filling in our story icons. obviously, these purple tea pots were the first to get colored!
filling in each shape as our board gets fuller with colour...
and a bit more progress on the story icons.... i always save painting the feet and legs and shoes for last!
because alice was our first faerie tale feet painting, i didn’t put as much crazy levels of research into it as i have the subsequent paintings in the series. it is a fave book of mine, and i’ve read it innumerous times. so lewis carroll’s alice’s adventures in wonderland was a piece i had always wanted to illustrate, so i started there.
regardless, alice’s background has many familiar icons:
the pocket watch with the white rabbit (“i’m late! i’m late!”)
various teapots & teacups (the mad tea party, of course)
the queen of heart’s crown
the “drink me” tag
and, plainly in the top left-hand corner, alice being quite befuddled as to what exactly is happening. she’s a watcher, a learner, a sensible gal in a nonsensical world. but she’s brave and strong. and won’t take any nonsense that stands in her way of getting back to where she needs to be.
painted in gouache, with alice’s shoes and stockings rendered in india ink.
original painting has SOLD, but you can contact me for a list of available faerie tale feet pieces.
be sure to check out alice’s companion piece: "a tempered heart." inspired by that villainous queen of hearts.