• Concentrate on detail (clothing, background, etc.)
• Combine multiple characters in a background setting

To this end, we came up with a quick story: Marsha has purchased some Faire food to share with BJ, and BJ has decided to surprise Marsha with a dragon puppet. Marsha must defend her food from the dragon. Simple, romantic, and cute.

Step one is usually to do a thumbnail of the layout. In this case, it was tiny and simple - just enough to get a feel for the balance.

Our next step is to refine the main characters, to get a good sense of the flow and action of what they're doing. Since our foxes aren't interacting with the background, we can focus on them separately: BJ, Marsha, and the dragon. What we're trying to establish with this effort is a good understanding of what our characters are doing, and what space they need to do it in. In this case, we also worked out some basic costumes and decorative details.

It was at this stage that we also changed a major detail of the piece. Originally they were eating Cheesecake On A Stick, a staple at most Renaissance Festivals. Having sketched out a number of stuck cheesecakes, however, we decided they didn't 'read' well; so the Faire food became Caramel Apples, instead. This in turn gave us the final title for the piece (Apple Dragon).

Next came a lot of fiddling with the background, trying to make everything work smoothly and flow without seeming forced. A major change from the thumbnail was that we decided to swap the background buildings and characters. This made the scene more interesting, and helped push the focus where we wanted it: on our foxes. We also decided to drop the Juggler On Stilts from the background, because he made the piece too busy and tended to lead the eye out the top of the picture.

The buildings were blocked in, and the background characters placed using tracing paper for each character or character group. Most of our paintings up to that point involved one or two characters at a time, so coordinating our 'crowd' was part of the challenge for this piece.

Each background character got their fair share of attention, but the girl with the bubble wand got more than most. We couldn't pin down her age and size, and went through several revisions until we were happy with her. Later she caused us more problems... but we'll get to that.

And yes, we draw our characters 'naked' - the clothes appear after we've established their shape and action.

Next comes the rendering. This painting was envisioned to be done 'comic book' style, with hard black outlines defining each element in the piece. The lightly-pencilled drawing was carefully inked in waterproof black onto Crescent cold press illustration board using a crow quill pen. Once dry, the pencils were gently but thoroughly erased.

Colors for the piece were established by photocopying the inked board, allowing us to try different detail schemes in Coloring Book fashion. (We sometimes color onto tracing paper laid over the finished art; each method has its merits.)

With a basic color scheme firmly in mind, transparent water colors are painted onto the board, building up layers of detail one brushstroke at a time. This is similar to the way we do wildlife and more realistic art, where hard outlines aren't used anywhere.

As the finished piece came together, layer by layer, we ran into a problem: the girl with the bubble wand came out too bright, and was drawing attention away from the central characters. With appropriate snarling and gnashing of teeth, we gently blended her colors to be slightly more monochromatic, less distinctive; and she reluctantly dropped into the background where she belonged.

Obviously, we're skipping a number of steps. But the painting was finished well in time to be shipped to ConFurence 8 in Los Angeles, where it premiered January 17, 1997. A (very) limited number of signed prints were sold at other conventions, and now they are long gone. But that's how this painting was done.

- but that's a tale for a future page!