This painting is a character study in oil of the Wicked Witch of the West that I’ll be adding to what will be an illustration portfolio piece of the Witch sending off the flying monkeys to get Dorothy. I’ve also included a detail of the flying monkeys that’ll be on the other side of the image.

I created the character study by first making a Sculpey maquette(small sculpture) that I then painted in acrylic. You start the maquette with sculpture wire massed with aluminum foil upon which you mold the sculpted until you get the form you’re going for.

Next, I drew a pencil study using the maquette as reference, along with photos of real people. I then complete d a painting of the witch’s head in oil.

It’s a technique I learned years ago from watching James Gurney’s “How I Paint Dinosaurs.” It works for basically anything that doesn’t exist in reality (our current reality) and gives me, in my work, a more convincing feeling of light and shade falling on an object. If I’m holding the physical maquette up in the light using it as reference, I can see shifts in color and value happening that I simply couldn’t get if working from imagination.

I find, with kids book illustration, if I want to do a character that’s less realistic/more cartoony/stylized, but still want a feeling of realistic light and form, maquettes are invaluable.

And, similar to animation, using moquettes allows you to get a consistency of character across multiple illustrations. If you have a book that’s 32-40 pages, you can hold the maquette up at the angles that you need in each picture, helping you to keep the proportions of the character accurate.

Really helpful. I’d recommend looking at the Gurney video to get more details of the process than I’m giving here. He shares so much online, it should be available, at least in parts, if not the whole.

You can also take a look at my Projects page for some images of my maquettes and how I used them to make drawings and paintings.