Getting back to the drawing board.

For my second and third paintings, I'll be using the Grimms' Hansel and Gretel and Munro Leaf's "Ferdinand."


My preliminary idea for the Hansel and Gretel painting is to completely rework a major element of the story. In the tale, the children seek solace in a cottage made completely of candy and chocolate. My idea is to transform the candy house into a house of discarded books. The symbolism behind this lies in the current budget crisis affecting the country--more locally, the CSU budget.


hansel and gretel, illustrated by jen corace

I am still figuring out what media would best suit this project. The idea of painting every individual book sounds pretty painstaking, and not in a way that I think would truly add to the overall work. As of right now, I'm thinking that I will paint everything in the landscape in oil and construct the house out of ink drawings, found pages, and cutouts that I will cut and form into the panels of a house. In creating the house out of various textures, I would hope to reflect a theme of the loss of materiality as well as access to educational resources.



this is similar to the composition i'm thinking of for this piece.

The idea of juxtaposing my graphic style directly into my oily representational one intrigues me. My aim is to start integrating my painting and sketching styles into one organized system that I can stick to. I am admittedly struggling with trying to remain cohesive and committed to my ideas, and I am pretty sure that these ideas will have to be drafted out several times before I figure out something successful. This painting isn't coming as easily to me as Little Red did, but I think that means I'm doing something right.

Another important aspect of this painting is that I don't plan to have any figures in the composition at all. This will be an interesting switch for me.

I plan to go to SCRAP, Goodwill, and other thrift stores on Monday to pick up material to start testing out my ideas.

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Ferdinand is very much in the mental/preliminary stage. I absolutely love this tale. So much, in fact, that I don't think I'd need to modernize or torque any elements of the story at all. I want to bring back my exploration of human nature vs. animal nature (represented through animal headdresses, which is a surprisingly common symbol in local illustration these days. Here are some examples/inspirational works that have guided me towards my animal/portrait combos.)


charmaine olivia

jen corace




I imagine a panoramic panel of 3-4 boys, obviously friends, who are facing front and showing off their scuffed faces. Maybe a black eye or two. You know how boys are. I'd want to have little Ferdinand set off a bit from the other boys, possibly turning away slightly, but not enough to completely hide his face from view. The other boys' headdresses would represent more feral creatures with bright, saturated fur colors, while Ferdinand's bull will have a soft, sensitive expression and will be more muted in hue and value.


carson ellis

I will put up drafts and sketches of these ideas as soon as I create them!