Painting the Pied Piper

In yesterday’s post I showed some of my pencil sketches for my Pied Piper illustration. The finished art, along with an excerpt of the story (which I rewrote, wanting to put my own spin on it) will appear in the Bucks County Illustrators Society’s portfolio book coming out in June.

I wanted to depict the scene of the Piper drawing all the rats of the town out into the main street, and leading them away. In my version of the story the rats literally dance to the Piper’s music, and everyone in the town gathers along the street to gawk and cheer. The Mayor and his councillors watch too, incredulous of the scene before them.

I roughed out a very general composition of the big shapes in the scene and shaded it in pencil for basic tones and contrast.

I drew the separate parts of the busy scene in detail on tracing paper, some of which I showed in yesterday’s post, and put all the tracings together into one drawing.

After tightening up it somewhat, I transferred it all to illustration board and made the foreground more prominent by outlining in prisma pencil.

I then painted it in using acrylic paints thinned with water – I took a few pictures of the stages –

Now the final piece, as it will appear in the BCiS portfolio book, along with the story excerpt :

To see samples of the work of some of the illustrators participating in the Bucks County Illustrators Society book, take a look at the gallery page on the BCiS website. And if you are interested in purchasing a copy of the portfolio book when it is published, please leave me a comment or email me, and I’ll give you ordering info when it’s available.