I was completely unfamiliar with Yurgod, but the challenge for the cover was to showcase characters that appeared in stories inside the issue.  Some characters I knew, but others, like Yurgod, I only had was a couple of images of him provided by my editor.  However, he was a visually appealing character, and I was eager to try my own take on him.  How could I resist the chance to draw a fantastical creature like this?  The drawings I had were very stylized, and I wanted to inject a sense of realism in anatomy to my version.  In order to depict him in a way that he would fit in even better with other Oz characters more firmly established in the canon, I wanted to add the bow to the end of his tail to echo the bows on the ends of the tails of the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger.  I think the bow makes him look decidedly “Ozzy.”

Pencils, Ink, Prismacolor Color Pencils, and Photoshop.
©Kevenn T. Smith 2010

Princess Ozma of Oz came on the scene in the second book of the series, The Marvelous Land of Oz.  Ozma, who was a fairy and the rightful ruler of Oz, was restored to the throne.  When Ozma and Dorothy met, the two got along famously and became best friends.  Ozma ended up making Dorothy a Princess of Oz.  In the sixth book of the series (which Baum intended to be the last, but was besieged with requests of “More Oz, Mr. Baum!”), The Emerald City of Oz, Dorothy, along with Toto, Uncle Henry, and Aunt Em (and Eureka the kitten whom we met in the fourth book, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz) all moved to Oz permanently.

In portraying Dorothy, I like to stick to Neill’s blond take on her.  I also draw her with visual cues like silver shoes and in modernizing her, I give her a gingham-like print on her t-shirt.  In Oz, you never grow older unless you want to, and Oz creators like Eric Shanower have Dorothy changing with the time, while remaining a child.  Even Neill drew Dorothy’s hair cut changing trhough the years that he illustrated the Oz books, through the early 1900′s to the 30′s.

I like that approach.  Ozma is usually depicted as being a little bit older than Dorothy.  Her pendant is a representation of the different areas of Oz:  Green in the middle for the Emerald City, yellow Winkie Country to the west, the purple Quadling Country to the north, the blue Munchkin Country to the east, and the red Quadling Country in the south.  Ozma was usually drawn wearing two large poppies on either side of her tiara, which I followed, but I left off some of the ornamental ribbons that were usually included on there as a way of showing that in some ways, Ozma is keeping up with the times too.  Who wears ribbons in their hair any more?  Like Dorothy, Ozma was also drawn differently as the Oz series progressed, even getting a little older.  I also thought it’d be nice to break the background tradition for the Singular Sensation entries and include a more detailed background.  It better contrasts with the rainbow magic and sparkles.

Pencils, Ink, Prismacolor Color Pencils,  Watercolor, and Photoshop.
©Kevenn T. Smith 2010

For the Scarecrow, I do go back to Baum’s text with details like one eye being bigger than the other.  However, I’m also greatly influenced by the depictions that John R. Neill and Michael Herring did of him as well.  I wanted to convey a sense of him being a little off balance, like Ray Bolger was in the MGM musical.

Nick Chopper, the Tin Woodman, presents a special challenge when looking at how Neill and Herring depicted him.  Their renditions, quite frankly, defy the laws of physics.  They draw the Tin Woodman with nearly two dimensional limbs that are hinged basically with pins onto the sides of his torso.  This leaves him incapable of a wide range of movement, but didn’t stop them from somehow depicting him holding his ax with two hands.  I wanted to base my version a little more in reality, so there was no real way that he would be able to reach across his own body to point toward the Scarecrow if his arm was simply pinned at the shoulder to his torso.  For me, the solution was to basically treat him like he was a human-sized action figure and give him ball joints that not only hinged, but swiveled and allowed for rotation.

Neill and Herring depicted him basically wearing a suit of tin with the collar, the side pockets, and the buttons down his torso, so I did as well.  They’d also draw him wearing spats on his feet, a bow tie around his neck, and a flower “pinned” on.  One thing that I added that’s usually forgotten, is when the Tin Woodman gets his heart from the Wizard of Oz in the first book, he is patched up on his chest, and a gold star is placed over where his heart is.  This gold star is usually omitted by many artists, but I like to add it, because I think it’s a nice detail that adds more character and visual interest to him.

Pencils, Ink, Prismacolor Color Pencils,  and Photoshop.
©Kevenn T. Smith 2010

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 2010

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 2010

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 2010

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 2010

This first “singular sensation” is to show off the full rendering of the Patchwork Girl illustration that I created for the title of this site.  Now, all the different patterns and colors used in composing Scraps can be seen, all the way down to her shoes.  Scraps is my favorite character from the Oz books.  I felt that her colorful look and personality was the perfect central face for the first image that shows up on this site.

Pencils, Ink, Prismacolor Color Pencils, Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator.
©Kevenn T. Smith 2009

Pictured in this piece from left to right are:  a Boar Guard (from the Russian Oz Series), the Witched Wick (an original character to a story in the issue), Bastinda (the Russian series Wicked Witch of the West), Polychrome the Rainbow’s Daughter, Bungle the Glass Cat, The Wizard of Oz, Yurgod the Gryphon (from the Russian series), Princess Ozma of Oz, and a Rain Sprite (an original character from a story in the issue)

The issue will be available to order from The International Wizard of Oz Club’s website.

Pencils, Ink, Prismacolor Color Pencils, Prismacolor Markers, Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator.
©Kevenn T. Smith 2009