Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Happy New Year, Party People!

Here's a special photo-filled blog story...please to enjoy...
My daughter has always had a life-long obsession with "The Wizard of Oz".
I guess most girls do...maybe because the protagonist, Dorothy, is a girl, maybe because it's
central theme of there being no place like home pulls at your inner child, or maybe it's the ruby slippers, who knows?
The point I'm making here is, she loves it...
She's been Dorothy for Halloween three times!
So when she turned seven in 2006, my wife and I decided to take her to see
the Broadway play, "Wicked". We had purchased the soundtrack so she knew a lot of the music already.
We kept it a surprise until the morning of her birthday and let her open the tickets when she got out of bed.
This is her reaction.



Since you guys are going to think "Wicked" is sponsoring my blog, I won't go into detail about the show itself,
but it was a magical night that exceeded expectations for all of us.




Shortly afterwards, I proceeded to try to paint a mural inspired by the play in my daughter's room.
I only wanted to use the existing paint colors that we'd already used in the room, with a hint of green.
Here's some of the preliminary drawings.




Elphaba-the name of the Wicked Witch of the West in the play- cut a very precise silhouette
in the poster I was recreating, so it took a lot of tape to get the shape just right.



Here's how the graphic over her bed turned out...The contrast of the black and the introduction of red
on the witch's lips felt out of place and later changed...




She's off to see the Wizard!



I wanted to use the second wall to do a grand scene with some of the other characters from
the original movie. (Who all make clever appearances in the play as well) I wanted to use the
artwork from the original Frank L. Baum stories, beautifully drawn by illustrator W.W. Denslow.



Here's how the graphic turned out when I removed the black and just made it tonal.



Action shots.




The Emerald City. (Based on the Map of Oz that acts as the curtain before the play begins.)



and, of course, Dorothy Gale.



Hopefully, this gives you an idea of the scope of the thing.



I've spent the last four days trying to finally finish what I'd originally started in 2007.
You ever have one of those things on your "To Do" list that you think you'll never get to?
My resolution this new year is to finish 'em all...
Her reaction to her new room made all the work worth it.