Slowly getting there...

An hour each evening...that's the time I can give myself to draw. It seems always such a short time! I can barely get into the "zone" that it's time to wrap things up and going to sleep. So I inch day by day, finishing some parts and realizing other will need to be changed.

Half way through...I did a bit more tonight.

I figured the color of the grass was too bright, despite my grey undertone and I had to use a Mustard yellow to darken in. I am happy with the trees, the sky and the background, but now looking at all the sweets, at the scattered candies, at the cookies and gummy bears, I wander if the children will be properly visible. The witch, with her dark garb, will be neatly cut against the light sky. The young bunch,  instead, has to contend with the crazy garden population, especially the Cookie man, looming just behind Bella...The main thing, I guess, is that I should have started coloring the protagonists first and build the surroundings to match them, not the other way around. That's a basic instinctive rule I have been following since childhood, when I cared nothing or not much for the backgrounds and only focused on getting the main character done properly. Of late, instead, maybe because I put so much effort in building interesting landscapes, I start coloring those and work my way backward to the protagonists. But, to do this successfully, I should either plan better or learn more control over my markers, because now it feels like the garden (particularly the chocolate walkway) is the main subject of the drawing and the children are completely lost in it, almost an afterthought. And that was not the feeling I wanted to convey...

...or maybe I have reached the usual desperation moment, when I think I completely ruined the drawing and wasted a lot of precious time in the process, but I will fix it in the end.

If not, I could flip the coin and rationalize that in this illustration, the children have subverted completely the Hansel and Gretel tale and have found pure delight and not dreadful peril in the garden, that they feel so comfortable, unafraid and in control that are completely part of what supposed to be a deadly trap. Meanwhile the "poor" witch and her crow and broom are sadly left out, displaced from their classical role in the story...now they have become the new protagonists, for which I feel sorry: look at how all their hard baking is being ravaged by the four little monsters!

Well I'll keep working on this and we'll see what happens in the next few sessions....I've learned another lesson, anyways. :)