Little Red Riding Hood

"Little Red Riding Hood" (Watercolor),  C. Eastwood, © 2014

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ittle Red Riding Hood hurried through the woods toward her grandmother’s house.  She was frightened by the villagers’ stories of the big bad wolf who lived in the dark forest. 

More experimenting in our class to learn how we might use watercolor in applications other than simply a painting to be hung on a wall.  This time we were to take a children's story and work through concept sketches and color scheme experimentation, with a final product of an illustration and the text it might accompany.  We were also challenged to so something "different" with the story -- to provide a "twist."  I decided to use the negative space painting technique to create the suggestion of a forest with Grandma's house in the distance.  And my "twist?" --  Little Red Riding Hood is no longer blond-haired and blue-eyed like the illustrations I remember from my childhood, but a young woman of color.  I wanted to try updating this story to a "modern" version that might appeal to children of all ethnicities.

Untitled -- Negative Space Painting

Untitled -- Negative Space Painting (Watercolor),  C. Eastwood © 2014

Some of you may have noticed that I have not been posting my work this semester.  It's not that I've stopped painting, it's just that this semester's watercolor class -- taken with a different instructor (Kristi Genoway) -- has been a time of exploration and experimentation.  One of the most freeing parts of the class as been her encouragement to indulge in "spectacular failures."  And trust me, I've taken full advantage of that and produced some pretty awful stuff.  But along the way, I've also learned some really cool techniques.  This is an example of a process called "negative space painting" where layer after layer is added to produce a feeling of depth.  It got confusing at times, trying to remember what needed to be left unpainted at each subsequent step, but the end result was quite interesting.