Now that the Lovers show is up (look for my Art Walk review with my piece in the Hive show next Friday) the time has come to worry about the next show.  Of course, I’d been trying to wrap my brain around it for a while.   Once again I misunderstood the theme.  In the first materials I received (months ago) about the show it was called “Alice II.”  I mistook this to mean we’d be imagining an Alice in Wonderland sequel, which of course already exists in Through the Looking Glass.  Eventually I realized that the “II” just meant that this was the second year the hive would be doing an Alice themed show – and the artwork did not have to reflect that fact.  So, I tossed out the bad ideas I’d been sketching up – such as making a mock movie poster with severed rabbit ears making the “II” of the “Alice II” – an allusion to the Saw II poster using severed fingers for the roman numerals.

While still working under the misunderstanding I showed these ideas to Sam and she suggested I have an Asian Alice doing the peace sign for the roman numerals.  I thought this was not any worse than my ideas so far and we did some test shots.  After realizing that “II” would have nothing to do with the artwork I decided to take the pose down a different (and more interesting) path.  In the new Alice, the young girl in question is Asian and has fallen down the rabbit hole with her portable camera.  I thought this was fitting as young girls in Japan right now are wearing clothing that is sometimes similar to Alice’s original outfit. The crappy Xerox scan of my outlined sketch is what I have begun to work with on canvas as of yesterday.  Is it too obvious who is holding the camera…or not obvious enough?  The rabbit looks rather unanimated – but I could not figure out a way at that angle to show a worried open mouth that didn’t look cartoony.  Other than the playing cards, I’m trying to avoid the Disney cartoon look.

This is also going to be the first time I’ve ever tried to paint a forest floor – something which is worrying me the most out of all the elements in the painting (but will likely receive the least scrutiny upon completion).