Hello friends,

I hope you’ve had a good week so far! This weeks post a few pieces of art about about one of my all time favourite book characters – the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland! And I thought maybe it might be fun to post some pages from my sketchbook.

And while the original Sir John Tenniel illustrations are in black and white in the book the Caterpillar is described as being blue (and precisely 3 inches tall) so I thought that tall my caterpillar related art should use blue tones. Theres a couple of cute drawings, some hand lettering art of “How Doth the Little Crocodile” and a brilliant Terry Pratchett quote!

So, enjoy some blue toned caterpillar/mushroom related art…I hope you like it.

This caterpillar is based more from the 2010 film directed by Tim Burton, I think the movie Absalom (although in the books he doesn’t have a name and is just referred to as the Caterpillar) is much more chilled out than the 1951 Disney version – who in my opinion was far too much of a diva and he yells at Alice far too often ! It’s drawn with crayons which are far harder to control than I remember them being a kid!

“How Doth the Little Crocodile” is a poem by Lewis Carroll which appears in his 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice recites it while attempting to recall “Against Idleness and Mischief” by Isaac Watts. It’s such a brilliant little poem and has always been one that stuck in my head.

This one is on really dark blue paper and written with white Windsor & Newton ink – white ink is probably my least favourite colour to use, it always seems so grainy and normally needs to have more than one coat as I think its quite thin/transparent. I really like how this piece uses so many different font styles but still looks quite cohesive.

When I create a piece of hand lettering like this I tend to very lightly sketch it out first as I always get nervous that I’ll run out of room! I’ve only been really learning calligraphy and hand lettering since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic as I started leaving myself positive notes around the house and decided that my hand writing really needed some work.

I totally recommend hand lettering as a hobby its sooooo relaxing and my hand writing has improved no end!

Below is a picture from one of my sketchbooks (from right at the start of the pandemic) which I adjusted in Affinity Photo to give it a blue colour, Alice in Wonderland has been a focus point of my art for so long I have quite a few Alice related sketchbooks!

All fungi are edible is one of Terry Pratchett’s quotes, I don’t think it’s related to any of his books, but it makes me smile every time I read it. The little mushrooms are so much fun to draw and the one in the centre became the mushroom for The little Blue Caterpillar which is below.

I re painted ‘The little Blue Caterpillar’ sat on a Fly agaric mushroom from my ART {Alice in Wonderland} post still finished off with a few tufts of grass, but drawn and painted onto watercolour paper that had been given a blue wash first.

I hope you enjoyed this weeks post, it was a lot of fun to come up with. Do you have a favourite or think things can be improved? 

Next week as the weather has brightened up a bit I’m hoping to get to the beach and maybe take a few half decent photographs!

So that’s it for this weeks blue caterpillar post…I hope you enjoyed this weeks post, it was a lot of fun to come up with. Do you have a favourite or think things can be improved? Next week I’m hoping to get out and snap some landscape shots. As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!