The Bookstore Lorax

Yes, this is a repost.  I’ll explain at the bottom.

I meant to put this guy up the other day when I finished him, but it’s been one of those weeks.  And so here I am today with him.  Take a moment to consider how many dead trees we have in the store, and what the Lorax (who speaks for them) would think of that.  I feel that he’d probably be a Kindle user.

Final Lorax

I actually have a process for these.  Back when I first started making them, Patricia and I were considering what medium would work best to paint on since all of the paintings were going to live on such an odd space (on top of bookshelves).  Canvas would be too expensive, plus we’d actually have to hang them.  We ended up picking foam board which was both a good and bad thing.  It was good in the sense that I could easily cut it into the exact size I needed it to be (for example, into the shape of a cow, pig, and chicken).  It was also lightweight which meant it was easy to work on (keep in mind that I painted most of these while working, so moving them was an actual concern) and easy to place almost anywhere.

The downside was, of course, that foam board is made of foam.  I did use watercolor on several of the paintings (All of V for Vendetta is watercolor, the Sandra Boynton animals, and parts of superman and the Cat in the Hat are as well).  The best way to seal a watercolor without causing it to smudge would be to use some sort of spray, however, for anyone who has ever experienced the sadness that is spray paint on foam, you know that would eat through the foam and probably ruin my paintings.  They do have a layer of paper on top, but I’m really not willing to risk it.  Also, using watercolor on V for Vendetta caused it to warp backwards into a U shape.  It isn’t noticeable when you’re looking up at it on display, but if you were staring straight at it from the same level you’d notice.

Back to the Lorax: I did free handed most of the shapes.  To make sure the Lorax himself was correctly sized, shaped, and positioned on the foam board (drawing and erasing over and over would create dents on the board) I made a stencil out of newsprint.  Everything else I felt confident enough to free hand.  Truffula trees are really very easy to draw, as it turns out.  And fun.  You really can’t screw up a Truffula tree.  Even if you try.

The second drawing shows the Lorax painted but not outlined, and I think that’s a prime example of why finishing touches often make a work of art.  I was honestly a little panicked when I finished painting because it looked awful, but as I slowly added the sketchy lines in, I began to see more and more Dr. Seuss emerge.  The inking is what we all remember from Dr. Seuss books.  They are all in color, but normally Seuss uses some sort of color scheme and doesn’t deviate far from that chosen color scheme.  Think Green Eggs and Ham: orange, green, yellow, a little bit of red, and some washed out blue.  It’s Dr. Seuss’ sketchy lines that add movement to his work.  I did mine with Sharpie.  Crazy, I know, but I’ve used paint pen before and it gets really old when you have to stop every few minutes and shake the pen to get more paint to come out.  At least when a Sharpie runs dry you can grumble about it and toss it.  It’s that extra hope that makes you think that a paint pen might start working again that makes them awful.

Cat and Lorax

Here’s the Cat and the Lorax together in their brief reign over the children’s section.  A week later it rained and the roof began to leak over them so we took them down.  The paintings are fine (really, they are); they’re currently all living at my house until we move the store this weekend.  Hopefully the new store wont have a leaky roof like the old one.

Lastly, I know you’re all asking “Why did you post this again, Angela?”  Well, there’s a fairly logical (read: stupid) reason for it.  I logged onto my blog last night in extreme tiredness and managed to permanently delete it without even trying.  My fingers are made of magic or evil or something.  It was too much for me to handle in my state of extreme exhaustion, so there were a few tears and some angry yelling, and then I went to bed which I should have just done in the first place, but that would have been logical.  So I rewrote the entire post (because, like an idiot, I hadn’t saved it to a file…which I’m now about to do).  It should have all of the same details (the intro is the same, thank you subscriber emails) just worded differently, so think of the experience as reading Twilight through Edward and Bella’s eyes (joking! joking! don’t do that!).  It’s just more of me…through my same eyes…

 

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