Wild Thing – Part 4 – The Chad Frye

Today in the progression of my Where the Wild Things Are tribute painting being created for TerribleYellowEyes.com, the time has come to show you the background.

In Part 3, you saw an explanation for the purple underpainting. Now I want to start laying in the actual colors of the piece. My intent with the leaves is to ultimately paint them each with a cool green (cool means a little blue-ish in tint) slightly different from one another. Mr. Sendak did that in his book on the spread that inspired this composition. I’m not really trying to mimic, but rather maintain the tone – the feeling – of the original.

So, before I hit those leaves with a cool green, perhaps spreading a warmer wash of yellow/green would be good. Since this is watercolor, a transparent and wet medium, this tone will not only bleed through the next layer a little, but will also mix in to the next layer of wet paint that’ll be applied. It’ll help give a little commonality to all the leaves despite the fact that I’ll be using about five or six different shades of green for them in the end.

My "Wild Thing" piece with a yellowish tone painted on all the background leaves. — My “Wild Thing” piece with a yellowish tone painted on all the background leaves.

So, now that the foundation for the leaves has been laid, it’s time to mix the shades of green to be applied next. You’ll notice in the image above that the purple underpainting is still showing through. I may have painted that underpainting a little light now that I look at it. Another layer or two is going to be applied to that area which may cover that purple. Ah well. I rarely look at a piece and think that something was a mistake. The painting is a living breathing thing with no one solution to solving a problem. I’ll keep pressing forward and see what happens.

Next, the application of all the various blue-greens. The greens are going down a little hot, and a little warmer than intended. Hard to tell yet if the background will compete with the characters. If it does, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. No big deal.

The background now with all the leaves painted in. In the final stages of the illustration, colored pencil will be employed to add details to them.

Come back tomorrow to see Part 5 in which I’ll share with you the beginning of painting the characters. It all leads to seeing the finished piece at TerribleYellowEyes.com on Friday!

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