A Titan Cover (Part 3): Closing Time

 

Peter Capaldi's last day filming Doctor Who,
photo by Sandra Franklin. 

Back in 2017, which feels like a whole other dimension in time and space, compared to what was to come in the next few years. Back then, I'd been waiting probably my whole life to see one of my illustrations published on the cover of a comic book.

Unfortunately, this was also an event that suffered from terrible timing.

First off: The Chaos

My comic cover in a shop in Liverpool.
(Thank you, George!)

The same week, my apartment's kitchen sink exploded— a waterfall resulted from maintenance trying to repair a stopped-up drain. Whatever was going on in the plumbing under the apartment complex affected four different apartments, where mine apparently was the epicenter of the disaster. (Ground Zero for tree roots growing into the pipes, or something like that.) This led to professional plumbers being called in who proclaimed that the floor must be jack-hammered open and investigated, which  turned into an extensive archaeological excavation.

So, I ended up with a crater in my kitchen. (Think the Sarlacc pit in Return of the Jedi.)

 ... and eventually I wound up with a new apartment.

I had wanted to move... but just not then. And not during the hottest Phoenix summer on record. The process of packing up my entire apartment began, and I somehow developed strep throat on top of it all. In fact, it got so bad that I drove myself to the emergency room at three in the morning because I was having trouble swallowing. (I think a lot of that actually had to do with stress and anxiety, to be honest.)

To make a long story short: if you ever find yourself living in a desert in the middle of summer and you have to pack everything up and relocate... try not to. I do not recommend it. 

This marred the celebratory event of my going to pick up Issue 3.4, Variant Cover D, that had my artwork of the Twelfth Doctor on it. But pick it up I did. I looked exhausted in the selfie that I took in All About Books and Comics, which was then my local comic shop in Phoenix.

All of the variant covers (including mine) would later be reprinted in a book of collected issues. My illustration was the last in the gallery but ended up getting a page to itself. (below) Very cool.

It was absolutely amazing to finally hold it in my hands. My online friends took photos of it displayed in their local shops, in places as far away from me as Liverpool.

Could it get better? Yes. 

Sandra Franklin meets Peter Capaldi...again. 

Freakin' Sandra  

My friend, photographer Sandra Franklin, lives in Cardiff, Wales. The running joke with her is that she always manages to be "taking pictures of squirrels in a nice park setting" when, "Oh, would you look at that! Doctor Who appears to be filming here! Oh, and here comes Peter Capaldi. Again."

Freakin' Sandra...

I lost count of how many times this had happened. 

I have to clarify that I jokingly call her "Freakin' Sandra" because she freakishly manages to do things like this all the time which results in many superb, evocative photographs. She had asked me to sign and mail a copy of my comic cover to her.

I signed my comic for her and mailed it back, adding "wiwer" over top the clockwork squirrel on the Doctor's guitar amp.  ("Wiwer" is Welsh for "squirrel".)

It turns out that Sandra had some more squirrelly business with which to surprise me. 

The cover signed by Peter Capaldi to me, (left) and the one
signed by me and then Peter, for Sandra. 

Closing Time

Peter Capaldi signing my comic on his last day of filming Doctor Who.

Freakin' Sandra manifested on the last day of Peter Capaldi filming his scenes as the Twelfth Doctor. He wandered outside to say hello and to greet fans. He signed autographs. He ended up signing a particular comic book cover as well—twice. "Two for one closing sale," he joked.
                        
                    Thank you, thank you, thank you, Sandra.

This was so surreal.

When she posted about her adventure online, Sandra shared mobile photos and said that she would be sending the autographed comic to me by post. I was in blissful disbelief. I kept checking my phone to look at it all again with a big stupid grin on my face.

I soon forgot about the record heat of the Arizona summer and my having to move out of my old apartment.

This had made my entire summer. 

More of Sandra's photos from that day...

                                                            ... Freakin' Sandra. 

All ready to hang on the wall of the new apartment.

It would take another year to finally meet Peter Capaldi
 myself, but that's a story for another post...

Elasti-Girl

Over thirty years ago, I did my one and only job for DC Comics, which was a pinup page in their Who's Who series. This particular series was comprised of oversized loose-leaf pages meant to go into a binder (sold separately). Each character was drawn by a different artist, with bio pages on opposite sides.

Back in 1990, I was a newbie. I had submitted some comic book penciling samples to Vertigo editors, mostly of Sandman characters, Animal Man and John Constantine, which were my personal favorites.

Tom Peyer, who was then the editor on both Animal Man and Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol, liked my early pencil attempts and gave this unknown artist a chance by assigning me a nearly forgotten character: early Doom Patrol member, Rita Farr, aka Elasti-Girl, who was still "deceased" at that point in time. She got better, however. In the long tradition of superheroes, she was magically resurrected years later, *finally* changing her name to Elasti-Woman. Currently, the character is brilliantly portrayed by April Bowbey in the fantastically bizarre Doom Patrol television series (which I love!)

This was one of my very early comic book jobs and I was still learning. It would take a brilliant inker to make my uncertain pencil lines have more life and style, and for thirty years, the identity of this inker had remained a mystery...

… until 2020.

Tom Peyer had wanted the same white cover panel that was then featured on issues of Doom Patrol to feature in the illustration, so that was what I built the composition around. Because this was pre-internet, I had been mailed photocopied reference about the character, whom I had been unfamiliar with, despite having been an avid reader of Morrison's run on the series. From these, I was able to research her, and I learn what her powers were. My initial idea was making a sort of movie poster, depicting her more gigantic aspect; sort of, "Attack of the 50-Foot Elasti-Woman." I also remember trying to base her appearance loosely on Emma Thompson.

In the crowd scene below her are various little characters. And yes, the guy who looks like he's missing his arms actually had them bent back at a weird angle, but it looks hilarious today. I even included a tiny John Constantine. I'm thankful to the colorist, Anthony Tollin, for getting this and giving him blonde hair and a beige trench coat. (Including Costantine was an in-joke that made Tom laugh on the phone— which is how you talked to editors long distance in those days before email.)

I also drew little pictures for the bio-side of the page, of different stages of Rita's life. Mark Waid was the writer of the text.

However, the inker was listed as "Alan Smithee," which was a pseudonym that was notoriously used by film directors who didn't want their name associated with their projects. "Alan Smithee" was obviously a professional, and he had managed to make my novice pencils look both stylish and polished. (This was long before I had learned to ink myself with any confidence.) Friends in the comic industry had recognized Ty Templeton's style instantly—but it was only in 2020, when I was told about a wonderful planned podcast about the DC Who's Who binder series, that someone actually asked Ty on Twitter if this was indeed his work, and he finally confirmed it.

A thirty-year mystery finally solved!

I remember being amazed at having been sent a check from DC even before I'd finished the work. It seemed unbelievable because it sometimes took independent publishers months to pay me for work, and then sometimes only in installments. (You could understand why I've always maintained a steady day job ever since.) You'll see that my name is credited as "Lorraine Szramski" here, rather than my nickname Raine. My full name ended up on the paycheck and it's also what ended up here.

For the record, my last name is pronounced Shram-skee. The z (zed) throws everyone off. However, I'm more than used to my name being mangled by now, lol.

I want to thank the Fire and Water team for such a fantastic podcast and for all their kind words about my artwork, both past and present. (The segment about Elasti-Girl starts at about the 35:30 mark.) I thank them again for contacting me with questions about this old illustration.

I also want to extend a huge thank you to Ty Templeton for having anonymously helped me out when I was a beginner. He enhanced my original pencils with his gorgeous inking style, and I've waited three decades to tell him how much I appreciated that!

Gentleman Krampus

 

He knows when you've been bad.

I'd been threatening for years to make a Krampus Christmas card and I ended up making two of them. I wrote about the first sketches for them in a blog post from waaaaay back in 2012 and ended up finally completing them in 2015 and 2016. 

For all who don't know, in the Alpine regions of Europe, St. Nick has a sidekick, who sort of works as "bad cop" to his "good cop": this is Herr Krampus. My version of him looks a bit more gentlemanly and Victorian. I was inspired by seeing a video of a Krampusnacht  parade and one dapper costumed Krampus in a top hat kissing a lady's hand.

Krampus Nacht happens on the 5th of December, but I find that the horned rascal is festive enough for the whole holiday season. 

I began the illustrations by photocopying these early sketchbook cartoons from 2012, enlarging them to trace on my lightbox onto bristol paper.

I had wanted to paint and ink them in full color this time, adding a decorative circle motif to each. I ended up using not only my gouache and ink pens, but my colored pencils as well.    

I began by inking the outlines with colored waterproof brush pens, animation style. Then I gradually started layering acrylic gouache on top of them, going with red, green, amber and gray as my color schemes.

In some old art of Krampus, he is shown as having both a cloven foot and a more bestial, claw-like foot. I decided to do that with one of my versions of him.

As well as being somewhat Dickensian, the clothes he is wearing are inspired by early 19th century German men's fashion, with some liberties taken. I really liked the wider-brimmed top hats of the period. 


Here's the first of my Krampuses— Krampi?— to be finished. I scanned it into Photoshop to do some clean-up on the image. While many people do all of their work digitally these days, I still prefer traditional paint and ink on paper. For me, working with physical pencils, pens and brushes is therapeutic. However, I will eventually use Photoshop to help clean up and refine the finished version before I share it.

I had actually painted two versions of the first Krampus (the one with the long tongue) and had decided almost toward the end that I didn't like the colors I was using; and so, I fussily started a new one from scratch. (This is also what happens when you use traditional methods.) I used the first version as a "study" to hopefully improve the second version.

In the past, some of my old paintings had gone through three different versions before I had gotten to one that I liked. Sometimes it's fun to take an old piece of artwork you've done and remake it with the skills you've hopefully learned since your first attempt. 

This wasn't one of those times, however.

What happened was that the second version came out almost identical to the first version. My first version hadn't been as bad as I had originally thought and now, I had two similar paintings. I ended up giving one of them away as a Christmas present.

Sometimes, you just need to put something down and walk away from it before you let yourself get too frustrated with it. Sometimes you might already be on the right track.

Finally, I turned both versions of Gentleman Krampus, the dashing rapscallion, into Christmas cards.

Have a happy Yule, everyone, and remember that he knows when you've been bad or good.

                                           ...Especially when you've been bad. 

Thirteen Faces the Storm and Grins

The night before the 13th Doctor's identity was announced, there was a strong monsoon storm in my part of the world, with thunder, lightning and violent winds that knocked trees over. “Ah, this must mean there's going to be a woman Doctor,” I had joked online. I was delighted to have been correct. But the storm seemed to be a harbinger of things to come. Not only was the reaction to her ceiling-smashing incarnation ridiculously tumultuous—but the world itself was going to be facing major challenges in the next few years of her tenure as Doctor.  

I absolutely loved the Thirteenth Doctor. I was in her camp from day one and I knew she would be amazing.

Jodie Whittaker was revealed as the new Doctor, in a clip of her walking through a forest toward the TARDIS. When she lifted the hood of her coat, it was almost magical, like a moment from a fairy tale. I may not be a little girl anymore (at least not in the temporal sense), but I felt that overwhelming joy that girls around the world must have felt then. It felt sensible and earth-shaking at the same time to have the Doctor finally be a woman.

(above left) This was my first interpretation of her, in the forest, having found the TARDIS. I'd put a pocket watch in all of my Doctor pictures and getting 13 on it in Roman numerals was going to tricky. I decided to start with 12 at the top and put 13 in the number one position. That way, I also had room for the next eleven Doctors as well. 

Of course, there are still those out there who would never accept the Doctor's newest transition—and I didn't care. I thought she was great. 

Jodie Whittaker has had one of the toughest Doctor tenures in the nearly 60-year history of Doctor Who. Not only is she the first woman to be cast as the famous shapeshifting alien Time Lord, but world events would shadow her time in the TARDIS with existential fear and uncertainty.

With her warm, breathless enthusiasm, she was the perfect incarnation to see us all through this. 

The global pandemic contributed to a rocky production schedule, new safety guidelines and therefore decreased episodes. Yet, the Thirteenth Doctor remained unflappable, reassuring, optimistic. It was Jodie Whittaker’s short video “5 Things the Doctor Does in Any Worrying Situation” that epitomized why she was so perfect in the role.

With her rainbow striped shirt, her oversized coat, her wide-eyed enthusiasm for adventure and her love and support for her TARDIS team—her “fam”— the 13th Doctor never failed to be a joy. Some of her fam moved on (Graham and Ryan), but one moved even closer to her. (Yaz.)

Thirteen soon became my comfort Doctor. When there were no new episodes with her, I sought out other media. Books and comics. I even bought and read books specifically targeted for very young readers. She and her fam were fun, funny, energetic and enthusiastic and their adventures were just what I needed when I was stuck indoors.

(above) An illustration I finished for the Doctor Who Appreciation Society for the cover of Cosmic Masque.

(right) Yaz and the Doctor, one of many sketchbook drawings I did, inspired by the 13th Doctor's episodes that I would like to go back and finish. 

On her travels, we got to meet such famous historical figures as Ada Lovelace and Rosa Parks and Nikola Tesla. We met a diabolical new Master played by the brilliant Sacha Dhawan. We learned a deep, well-hidden Time Lord secret in "The Timeless Children". We also met Jo Martin's amazing “Fugitive” Doctor—whom we need so much more of because she nailed the essence of the Doctor so quickly and completely in her brief appearances.

(left) I loved the episode, "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror", as I've always having been fascinated with the scientist.

The 13th Doctor was also an inventor (she fashioned her sonic screwdriver out of Sheffield spoons), and I wanted an excuse to draw her with her goggles. Very steampunk. Another sketch to do a finished version of.

Most importantly, we discovered that the Doctor seemed endless. Her history was diverse and inclusive, and anyone could be an aspect of her future and her past. There was room for all of us.

(right) One of the many pictures I drew with the newly discovered "Fugitive" Doctor from a pre-Hartnell incarnation. Just how far back did the Doctor go? I was thrilled to have the once-mysterious "Morbius" Doctors from the Fourth Doctor's era, to now be canon.

I'm writing this post the day before Jodie Whittaker's last Doctor Who adventure. I will miss her and her resilience in the face of opposition, as well as her big grin in the face of the oncoming storm. I'll miss her sense of wonder when making discoveries. I will remember the comfort her Doctor gave me in some personally difficult times. She follows in the booted footsteps of my beloved 12th Doctor, living up to her predecessor’s regeneration advice:

 “Run fast, laugh hard, be kind.”

And now her time has come to shift into her next form.
Despite the heartbreak of saying goodbye, I welcome the excitement and wonder of yet another regeneration and getting to meet our next Doctor, who will be played by Ncuti Gatwa.

I can’t wait to start another adventure.

A Titan Cover (Part 2): A Clockwork Squirrel

First Scribbles

I mentioned in my last post that I had been contacted by Titan Comics to do a variant cover for one of the Doctor Who lines, and that I had picked Twelve as the Doctor I had wanted to start with. (Because, of course.)

So, after much doodling and scribbling in my sketchbook, trying to brainstorm, I finally settled on an idea.

This was the small thumbnail sketch; very, very rough and only about five inches tall. It might be hard to see in such a scribbly form, but the idea was that the Twelfth Doctor is tuning his guitar with his sonic screwdriver.

Behind him is the double-ringed planet I had put in my very first Capaldi picture (yes, I know, self-referential) and on his amplifier is the clockwork squirrel that Twelve was mentioned as having built and which was seen only once in the show.

"Squirrel" is also an in-joke with a friend of mine (*ahem* Sandra) — and I couldn't resist. (Whenever she came across DW filming locally in Wales, she claimed to just be out "taking pictures of squirrels in the park.")

The idea to tune the guitar came about because I had written some Blake's 7 fan-fiction (yes, you heard right) on the Horizon fan club site, based on some group prompts. "Creation" was about the character Dayna building a harp and fellow crew member Vila stealing a tuning fork for her. While writing it, I found myself looking up tuning forks and discovered that they're electronic now (I'm slow), which made me think it would be sort of like having an actual sonic screwdriver.

Hmmm...

That was the germ of the illustration's idea.

I was grateful to a fellow employee at the bookstore where I worked at the time, for kindly lending me his electric guitar as a prop. I had also ordered the 12th Doctor's blue sonic screwdriver which I also ended up using as a prop for more than one picture. (Plus, it's seriously cool and fun to play with.)

After taking quite a few laptop photos of myself posing with the guitar, I picked one of the more usable ones for reference.

And yes. I pose for my own illustrations all the time, and yes, they're always embarrassing to look at. And no, I don't want to show them to you. (Well, at least, not now. They're very silly.)

Now that I had my reference, I was off and drawing. And there was much erasing, too. 

The next step was the actual full-page working sketch in which I needed to get the anatomy and likeness right, as well: one of the hardest things that needs to be done for any illustration, but it ends up being the bones of the finished picture.

Larger Rough Sketch

Now I had my working sketch done. It still looks pretty rough here, but I save all of the tightening up — the fun part! — for the finished version. The next step, however, was photocopying it to the size I needed it and tracing it on my lightbox, transferring it on to comic illustration board.

I gave much more space to the top of the picture for the eventual logo, etc., and you'd be able to see more of the ringed planet in the background.

Ink and Paint

More progress.

After I'd transferred the drawing, I'd cleaned it up a bit, making further adjustments. I still have a lot of these comic boards left over from working on my comic, Heaven and the DeadCity, and they have a nice vellum surface, better for painting. They also have all the page dimensions I needed already printed on them.

I inked the drawing so I would still be able to see the black lines beneath the eventual paint that I added.

The next step was the first layer of paint, which was done in the usual grey-scale acrylic gouache. Here, I've worked out the shading, all the lights and darks. It's still very loose and rough at this stage, but it will tighten up as I continue to add detail and sharper lines.

The very last stage would be the color highlights, which would be blue for the sonic screwdriver and the Doctor's eyes, and maroon red for his velvet coat.

Adding Some Color...

One of the last steps was adding my accent colors. It's become a thing people recognize about my mostly monochrome artwork.

Here's a detail of a little bit of the red and blue I used over top the grey. After this, I moved on to defining the black lines a little more, as well as white highlights and other outlines.  This helped sharpen up some of the looser edges.

Finally, the end stage was to photograph it and then clean it and up some more in Photoshop, making a few more adjustments. (In other words, get rid of speckles and the inevitable cat hair and human hair that always lands somewhere in the paint where I don't notice it.)

And...done! And submitted.

My 12th Doctor Variant Cover for Titan Comics! (Complete with clockwork squirrel.)

And then the wait began to see it actually in print and inside a comic book shop.

A Titan Comics Cover (Part 1): Keeping It Cosmic

Have you ever just fooled around with some of your artwork, just for fun, and accidentally gotten a professional job out of it?

This happened to me a few years ago.

Because I hadn't been updating The Watcher Tree as much as I would have liked to in the past few years, I never did get around to writing about some of my recent milestones here. (I did, however, keep everyone updated on my Patreon as it was occurring.) This was one of them and was extremely exciting to me at the time.

All of the fooling around that I mentioned pretty much started back on October 1, 2013 and I blame Peter Capaldi for it. He had just been announced as the next incarnation of Doctor Who and I was part of a group of people who had sent him a welcoming present of fan art that Christmas.

At the time, we had no idea what his costume might look like, so this was my imagined take on it. I wasn't too far off— I was going for an "older Bowie" look. And I'd always liked his hair, well... bigger. I thought that made him look less like his other famous role of Malcolm Tucker. His hair would eventually achieve proper floof status, which made me very happy.

I found myself in previously uncharted realms. I was new to showing people my fan art. Drawing Doctor Who would lead to my being able to practice new techniques and show my art more publicly online. It led to my making a lot of new friends as well.

A few months later, Peter himself sent thank you messages to all who participated in the fan art presents. He loves fan art, being an artist himself, and he even drew us little planets and Daleks on signed postcards. (I have mine framed and hanging on the wall.) He wrote to me: "Keep it cosmic!" (I wrote a squee-ing Watcher Tree blog post about it almost a decade ago.) Coincidentally, when I finally got to meet him five years later, he also told me to "keep it cosmic". (I'll definitely write about that meeting in a future blog post.)

Well, this first foray into Doctor Who fan art led to a long project. I began to draw portraits of each of the Doctors in my sketchbook, accompanied this time by little fob-watches in the corners counting down their numbering, where I could also conveniently put my signature. (I also chronicled the progress of these illustrations in earlier posts on this blog.) 

I hadn't planned at the time to do finished versions of the sketches at all. Sadly, my dad died, quite suddenly. I was still in shock over it, and I found myself at home from work for a few weeks and needing something else to occupy my mind, to make me feel less helpless. I turned to my drawing table, just to give me something to do. I ended up barely leaving it. 

As it turned out, it was the distraction that I desperately needed.

I pulled out my gouache paints and started with a finished version of my Tenth Doctor drawing. He was my friend Sandra Franklin's favorite, and she would be flying in to visit from England the following week and I wanted to try and get it done for her to see.

I finished Ten in two days, a record time for me. (The other 14 pictures to follow weren't done in such a similarly sad fervor.)

After this, I thought, well, there's all the other Doctors to do, too. Keep going. Make it your new assignment.

So, I did.

(left) This is the sign I made to greet my friend Sandra at the airport. It was done the previous night in children's markers on poster board. It got a few laughs from the other passengers arriving from Las Vegas, too.

(Photo by Sandra Franklin.) 

Doctor Who Blank Sketch Covers

Titan Comics put out special blank sketch covers of their DW titles, so I decided to have a go playing with them. I took some of my own Doctor illustrations and made little mock-up covers, using the sketch cover as a template.  

This also helped me practice using Photoshop, which I still admit to being a novice with. I had to make modifications to the original art to make it fit around the logo; this took more time than I had intended. However, once I started fooling around with them, I lost track of the hours I was hunched over my laptop, but I remember having a blast pretending these were real. 

The resolution of the type in this first experiment (right) is too small, but I just wanted to see what my Ten might look like as a cover. As with the others I played with, I had to add more sky over his head and remove the clock in the corner.

(Here's an old post which explains the clock in each of my Doctor pictures. In the case of David Tennant, he's ten o'clock, of course.) I also added the little photo of the actor to the upper corner.

I then moved on to the Third and Fourth Doctors, repeating the process in order to make the logo fit. These ones turned out much better, I think. I didn't have a template for the Third Doctor, so I just had him "guest-star" in the Twelfth Doctor's comic. (I added my own small Twelve up in the corner.) Four had his own line, so it wasn't a problem there. 

Proud of my fun, I shared my fake covers on Twitter, and people seemed to like them. 

There was a misunderstanding in which someone thought I actually had done a variant cover for Titan, and I had to explain that no, these were not real, that I was just playing around with my own artwork. Coincidentally, at the time, there was a limited comics series featuring the Third Doctor written by Paul Cornell, with art by Chris Jones, and both of these creators saw my fake covers on Twitter as well. (Superb story, by the way. I bought all of the issues, and the collected volume can be found here.)

Then, to my utter surprise, Andrew James, who was then editor of the Titan Doctor Who line, contacted me and asked if I wanted to do a variant cover for real this time. 

                                                                           !!!!

I think you know how I responded. 

He asked, "Which Doctor would you like to start with...?"

It was pretty obvious which one I would choose: it was the one who had started all of this "fooling around" for me in the first place, and had been the subject of my first ever fan art. (And yes, it had taken me this long into adulthood to actively make fan art.) 

I was both ecstatic and terrified at the same time. The result would become my first ever professional comic book cover.

And so, I began trying to come up with an idea for a possible Twelfth Doctor cover. 

                              

                                            To be continued ...

Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

 

This painting was started ten years ago. Really. Sometimes it takes me a while to get back to working on certain projects, but this is ridiculous. In this year's blistering Phoenix summer, I had just moved apartments. I had finally gotten a bigger one, one in which I could turn the bedroom into a studio/library/geek room. After the exhausting move (I have a lot of boxes of  books), I was looking forward to the cooled-off season which is supposedly autumn in the desert. It usually starts mid-October...if we're lucky. 
     

I unpacked my art supplies and looked at my Stack of Unfinished Pictures™, and this one of John Keats, based on his ode, "To Autumn," was at the top of it.

Back in 2013, I had even written a very early blog post on The Watcher Tree about it. I called that particular post "Starting Keats...(Part 1)" ...

...but I never did get around to "Part 2."

If you want to see all of the early steps of preparation and my slow process on this painting, I've got you covered in that post, which includes a lot of progress photos. This is how long it takes for me to work in color: it's a precarious balancing act for me. 

And so, here we finally are—a decade later.

I thought I needed to get 'To Autumn" done for Autumn 2022 and it would be the first thing I put on my drawing table in my new apartment.

A little about my idea here: I have a recurring leaf-haired Autumn Fairy character in many of my old paintings from the '90s, when I had practiced with watercolors and gouache for the first time.

Autumn has always been my favorite season, maybe because that's when my birthday is. I love the change of colors in trees, I love pumpkins and Halloween—and yes, as you may have suspected, I drink pumpkin spice coffee by the gallon.

Autumn is my special muse, too.

Fun fact: John Keats was born on Halloween, and he had a fondness for cats, which is why I included the black kitten who is fascinated by his feather quill pen. And I just have a special love for black cats, anyway.

The painting is really a cornucopia of mixed media. I used gouache, ink pens and ink brushes, colored pencils, chalk and even acrylics. I had adopted a large set of acrylic paints left behind at my workplace, and I'm still navigating how to use them. I do prefer the matte quality of gouache to the shinier look of acrylics, but a cool thing is that gouache and acrylics can be blended together. Gouache plays well with other media.

Experimenting is FUN, kids!

It's been quite a while since I finished a full color painting, and this one is a little bigger than my usual working size. Its large size also contributed to my putting it aside (continuously) to work on smaller illustrations.

Once I thought I had done all I could with it, I taped it around all the edges to a board, carried it outside and then photographed it in the sunlight. I picked the best of the photographs and then tinkered with it in Photoshop, brightening, sharpening, and getting rid of the usual cat hair that ends up everywhere. (Or sometimes it's my own hair I find, too.) 

After ten years in the making, it's FINALLY done!

Have you ever spent this long on a piece of artwork, or put something aside that you picked up years later? And who is your favorite poet and why is it John Keats?

Happy Equinox and season of mists!