Friends We Make by Kevenn T. Smith

Friends We Make by Kevenn T. Smith an original digital illustration ©2026 Kevenn T. Smith

It’s been an incredibly eventful year and a half as of this posting. In 2025, I moved from the Cleveland, Ohio area to Chicago, Illinois. It was a huge move and took me a long time to get things unpacked and put away and to also just adjust to living a completely new lifestyle in a new city.

Living in Chicago has been very inspiring. I’m now living in the city that L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in. In 1893, Chicago held the World’s Fair, which featured The White City, temporary buildings that showcased neoclassical architecture that would inspire Baum’s Emerald City and Oz architecture. The Oz books would describe most Oz houses as being round with domed tops. These elements were touchstones for me in finding my own spin on the Emerald City, and imagining what the Emerald City would look like now, after over a hundred years and having some influence and awareness of our own modern world. In creating this new Oz illustration, I was very inspired by my morning commute while waiting to transfer trains at the Merchandise Mart station and seeing a kind of “slice of the city” as I wait. I wanted to show a scene in a garden in the middle of the city and hopefully convey the duality that I found in the city of spaces of calm amidst a bustling city where individuals can connect.

I wanted to feature the Shaggy Man, who was a character that Baum introduced in his fifth book, The Road to Oz. This is a character very near and dear to my heart. The Shaggy Man was introduced as an itinerant man who met young Dorothy outside her Kansas home hoping to avoid going to the town of Butterfield, where a man owed him fifteen cents. In the course of the book, Shaggy Man is a character who is very kind and protecting of Dorothy and the other young characters that they meet along their journey to the land of Oz. And while he possesses an item called the Love Magnet, that causes everyone that he meets to love him, his character even enchants the readers. He’s a character who disdains capitalism, and when he hears that there is no money used in the Land of Oz, longs to live there forever, which he ends up getting to do. His shaggy rags are replaced by clean shaggy clothes, and he becomes one of the beloved members of Queen Ozma’s court - without the Love Magnet, which ends up being hung over the main gate of the Emerald City, so all who pass through the gate will be filled with love and be loving. In his appearances in subsequent books, he continues to be a kind man who children feel safe to be around.

When I thought of how I was going to depict the Shaggy Man, I thought about someone who always made me feel safe, and one person that quickly came to mind was comedian and activist Dick Gregory. When I saw him on television as a young child, something about him always made me feel warm, safe and comforted. While Dick Gregory is no longer alive, I did think about my friend, Mike, who I feel has “Dick Gregory energy,” and also possesses an incredible smile. My friend Mike is kind, funny, clever, smart, and warm just like the Shaggy Man in the Oz books, and I knew he would be the perfect model for this character. And I was lucky enough that he graciously posed for me for this illustration.

This piece also features Billina, the Yellow Hen, who debuted in Baum’s third Oz book, Ozma of Oz. Billina also ended up living in the Emerald City, and would wear a string of pearls around her neck. For this piece, I ended up researching Buff Orpington chickens and thought that they would very likely be the breed of chicken that Billina was meant to be.

Jack Pumpkinhead is another character in this piece. He was created by Ozma when she was under an enchantment living as a boy named Tip, whom he considered as his parent. Jack was brought to life with a magic powder, and he soon ran away with Tip from the old witch, Mombi, both eventually ending up at the Emerald City. Tip was restored as Ozma, the rightful ruler of Oz, and I feel the parental relationship to Jack often gets forgotten in the books, though Ozma does occasionally carve a new pumpkin head for Jack when the head he wears begins to spoil. For my Jack Pumpkinhead depiction, I wanted to re-establish that connection, and thus gave him a small crown to wear as a prince of the Land of Oz.

The final character in this piece is Tik-Tok, one of the first humanoid robots to appear in literature. He was also introduced in Ozma of Oz, and would also come to live permanently in the Emerald City. I was really looking forward to refining my own take on him for this piece. I do highly favor the original illustrations by John R. Neill, but I also wanted to bring an element of his design from the movie Return to Oz, specifically with his green glass eyes.

This illustration is available as prints, posters, cards, stickers, magnets and tote bags at my Redbubble store.

Tik-Tok from this piece is also available on various products like t-shirts, hats, phone cases, prints, stickers, tote bags and more also at my Redbubble store, like the t-shirt pictured in below.

The What The Tok T-shirt available at my Redbubble store ©2026 Kevenn T. Smith