Little Star in Gentleman Costume

Happy Halloween!

I started this piece mid September with Halloween theme in mind.

Thumbnail of initial ideas

The first idea (see 1) was a witch who hid behind a bush and stole candies from a child—the main character—with some kind of levitating spell while the child was lured by the witch's cat. I quickly realized this was overly complicated.

To simplify, I focused on candies. I wanted to play with scale, so what about cute characters eating giant candies? 2, 2a, and 2b are explorations of this idea. I was happy with these, but I wanted to try out other ideas...

Second round thumbnails

What if the candies are sentient and looking at the Little Star characters? I drew a first with only Nils, the tiny character. b added Little Star and Lise, the girl, turned to see the viewer. I really liked how Little Star and Lise looked here.

Third round of thumbnails

Finally, I explored focusing on costumes instead of candies. What about Little Star dressing up the first time for his first Halloween? 1A and 1B are experiments with character placement. 2 is an outline of important elements. I decided this would be the image to draw.

The pencil of the final image is below. I changed Lise's pose because I like this one better than the one in thumbnail 2. I added Halloween decorations on the corners: spider web, bats, and pumpkin. I also added clothes and thread rolls to suggest that Lise had just finished making the costumes for Little Star and tiny Nils.

Pencil of the final image

Looking at the thumbnail of the pencil, I found the spider web got too much detail. I decided to simplify it into lines when inking.

Inked final image

While painting, I tested positive for Covid. I rest in bed for 4 days and forgot my original idea of the colors. I do not fully comprehend what happened—I thought I kept the idea in mind; but I could not recall it after I recovered. I reverted to my comfortable painting method of picking color based on what I think a material should look. I was not happy with the final color palette, but the lighting contrast is hopefully strong enough to support the final image.