Singular Sensation: The Hungry Tiger of Oz

This Singular Sensation entry features my illustration of The Hungry Tiger of Oz that appeared smaller and partially obscured on the original "Contact Me" page of this site.  The Hungry Tiger was officially introduced in L. Frank Baum's third Oz book, Ozma of Oz.  However, many people believe (and I'm one of them) that he was also the same tiger that appeared in a chapter near the end of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy and her friends are on their way to the Quadling Country in the south of Oz to see Glinda about getting Dorothy home.  In the chapter, the Cowardly Lion defeats a giant spider-like monster who is terrorizing animals in a forest, and he ends up becoming their king.

In Ozma of Oz, we meet the tiger, who is the Cowardly Lion's trusty companion by this time, and we learn why he's called the Hungry Tiger.  Apprently, he has an insatiable appetite for fat babies.  The thought of a corpulent little infant makes his mouth water, but he's never able to devour one because his conscious always prevents him.  Throughout the Oz series, the Hungry Tiger is a member of Ozma's court, and also serves alongside the Cowardly Lion as an imposing figure reclining near Princess Ozma's throne.

For this illustration, the Hungry Tiger has often been depicted wearing a pink bow around his tail, but I thought that a teal green bow would pop better against the orange fur of the tiger.  Baum also wrote that the Hungry Tiger had purple stripes in his first appearance, but I'm not a fan of purple stripes on a tiger, and he's usually not depicted having them either - by John O'Neill the most prolific Oz illustrator, or Michael Herring, who illustrated the covers for the Del Rey paperback editions that I grew up on.  For his face, I used some elements of my dogs Lucy and Humphrey for inspiration, especially when it comes to the tip of his tongue sticking out.

Pencils, Ink, Prismacolor Color Pencils,  and Photoshop.
©Kevenn T. Smith 2011

Now available along with The Cowardly Lion on a t-shirt at RedBubble.com!

Singular Sensation: The Cowardly Lion

This Singular Sensation entry focuses on the Cowardly Lion illustration that I did for the original "contact Me: page of this site.  I wanted to present him bigger here than he appears on that page.  Everyone knows the Cowardly Lion, but most people are used to thinking of the Cowardly Lion in terms of a person dressed up in a costume, like Burt Lahr in the MGM movie.  However, in the books, the Cowardly Lion is a real lion who talks, like all of the animals in Oz do.

I think that when the lion is presented as an actual large lion who acts cowardly, as opposed to a person in a costume, the visuals get to be more interesting and contradictory to the behavior.  For this interpretation of the Cowardly Lion, I wanted to make him more personal.  I made his eyes bigger than an actual lion's eyes, while keeping the rest of the lion's anatomical proportions intact.  Another thing about the eyes, were that I based them on my dog, Humphrey.  He's like my own personal Cowardly Lion, who is all bark, but when someone actually stands up to him (like a cat), he runs away crying.

The bows are things that John R. Neill drew on the Cowardly Lion when he originally illustrated the Oz books.  I think they're great touches that serve to visually reinforce the contrasts going on with the cowardliness and the powerful frame of a lion.  Michael Herring usually painted the bows light blue in the covers that he did for the Del Rey paperback editions of the Oz books, and those were the printings of the books that I grew up with, so I tend to try to give little nods to him and Neill when I illustrate Oz characters.



Pencils, Ink, Prismacolor Color Pencils,  and Photoshop.
©Kevenn T. Smith 2011

Now available along with The Hungry Tiger on a t-shirt at RedBubble.com!

Singular Sensation: Polychrome

The third entry in my Singular Sensation series is of another character that I drew for the wrap-around cover of Oziana #37, Polychrome.  This was the third time I had drawn Polychrome, and only the second time I had colored a drawing of her.  She is a fairy and the daughter of the rainbow, and coloring her can be quite a complicated process.  In the books, she is always described and depicted as wearing a dress in rainbow colors.  I didn't want the colors to just be plain vertical stripes.  That would be boring.  It was a fun challenge to have them blend all together in a diagonal direction.  In the books, she's usually always dancing about, so it was very important that there be a sense of energy going on.

Polychrome is a visually fascinating character to me, like Scraps the Patchwork Girl, because of all the colors involved.  The great thing about the two characters is seeing how two characters full of different colors can also look so differently.  Scraps is a loud and boisterous character in the books, so her colors need to be intense.  Polychrome is usually written as a sweet and passive character, so I use tones that are, in comparison, more subdued on her.
Pencils, Ink, Prismacolor Color Pencils, Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator.
©Kevenn T. Smith 2011

Now available as a t-shirt on RedBubble.com!

Spider-Man: The Boys Next Door

I'm currently involved in a local production of the play, The Boys Next Door.  The play is set in the early 1980's, and one of the characters has a scene where he wears a Spider-Man tie.  No one could find a Spider-Man tie in the stores in our area, so I volunteered to make one.  I wanted to make it rather simplistic.  It couldn't have all the dramatic coloring that comic book characters have nowadays, though I did add some shades and tones to keep it from looking completely flat.  The tie that the design went on is red, and has a pattern on it that is suggestive of a spider web.


Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop
©Kevenn T. Smith 2011

Spider-Man ©Marvel Comics 2011

Singular Sensation: Pig Guard

This second entry in my Singular Sensation series is of a character drawn for the cover of Oziana #37.  I simply call him "Pig Guard."  I got a request to draw characters that appeared in stories in the issue, but I didn't always have access to the actual stories.  In some cases, all I got was copies of artwork being used to illustrate the stories.  In this case, all I had was an illustration to go on, but one that really captured my imagination.  I am a big fan of the work that The Four Horsemen studio did on updating Mattel's Masters of the Universe property for the 2002 line.  The amount of detail they put into each of the character re-designs continues to impress me.  When I saw the illustration of this "Pig Guard" character, I thought it would be a really fun idea to give him that same kind of approach.  I wanted to put more detail into his look and to introduce a more aggressive and physical element to the entire wrap-around cover piece.

In the cover piece, the Pig Guard was going to be fighting on the same side as Bastinda, the Russian version of the Wicked Witch of the West.  I thought it would be a nice homage to the Winkie Soldiers in the MGM musical movie version of The Wizard of Oz if I made the Pig Guard's skin green.  However, when I thought about that, I worried that some people would think that I was trying to rip off the Gammorean Guards in the palace of Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi.  So that idea was nixed.  I still wanted to make the Pig Guard look more otherwordly, instead of a pink, tan, or brown skin tones that one usually found on a pig.  That's when I hit upon the idea to make the skin tone a nice "decayed blue."  It really worked too!  I thought I was being so original, until a friend pointed out that Gannon, the Big Boss in The Legend of Zelda game for Nintendo, was a big blue pig.  It's true, there really is nothing entirely new!  I haven't played that game in years, but from what I remember of the character, I think I made this Pig Guard look significantly different.


Pencils, Ink, Prismacolor Color Pencils, Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator.
©Kevenn T. Smith 2011