[MUSIC]
Hey, everybody.
My name is Lina Maslo.
And I am an author and illustrator of children's books, such as Free as a Bird,
the story of Malala and Through the Wardrobe, How C.S Lewis Created Narnia.
Today I'm going to show you how to do a drawing of one of
the characters from Through the Wardrobe, Reepicheep.
Reepicheep is a small mouse with a big personality, and he happens to be one of
my favorite characters from the Narnia series written by CS Lewis.
We're going to draw Reepicheep using simple shapes and
then we're going to ink him with a dip pen and ink.
And one reason why I chose to do the final art in this book with a dip pen
was because CS Lewis actually wrote most of his manuscripts with a dip pen.
He mentioned once that he liked to have that little pause in between sentences.
Where he would dip the pen in the ink,
and that gave him some time to think about what he would write next.
So let's go ahead and get started.
All right, so let's get started with the sketching process.
We're going to start off by drawing a circle for Reepicheep's head,
then I'm gonna draw like this teardrop sort of body.
Let's give him a nose by adding a triangular shape over here,
and I want him to be holding a sword,
because Reepicheep is a brave little mouse.
He might be small, but he does not lack in courage.
[MUSIC]
Let's give him some eyes, a nose.
[MUSIC]
Now, Reepicheep is described as having a little
circlet of gold on his head with a big crimson feather, okay?
Now, the legs are a little more complicated to draw,
they're sort of these upside down triangle shapes.
And then there's kind of a few angles here, a short little leg and
then a long foot, with a few toes.
[MUSIC]
Let's give him an arm over here, maybe he's got like a little fist,
see, he's excited.
And let's not forget Reepicheep's tail.
Reepicheep is very particular about his tail.
You can read about that in the book Prince Caspian.
[MUSIC]
A little bit of a Narnia background here.
So this here is my sketch, and I'm going to go ahead and
transfer this onto a thicker paper.
So let me just show you the sketch a little bit closer, we have his head as
a circle, the teardrop, the legs,and the arms.
And I use a light table to transfer the sketch onto a thicker paper,
water color paper or in this case, I use an acrylic paper.
And for the sake of time, I'll already drawn a picture,
I've already transferred a picture of Reepicheep onto this paper.
And we're going to go ahead and start painting.
So for the inking process,
I've transferred this ink into a smaller container and
I've mixed it with water a little bit to tone down the darkness of the violet.
And I also have here some water for
cleaning my pen as I go along, paper towel, and a little extra piece of paper
that I can test my ink on if I need to.
Okay, so we're gonna dip it in and let's get started.
[MUSIC]
So CS Lewis really loved mice.
He had some as pets when he was a child.
And then, when he was in World War II, actually,
he kind of made friends with some of the mice that were in the trenches with him.
One even huddled up with him at one point
while the shells were exploding all around him.
And even as he got older, he never really set traps for mice.
He felt that they also deserved to live their lives and
maybe eat out of his pantry once in a while if they needed to survive.
[MUSIC]
Let's not forget, I think we forgot to draw whiskers
in that first sketch, gotta have whiskers on there.
So as you can see,
instead of drawing the line, I'm just drawing the fur as I go down
[MUSIC]
I'm not following the line exactly on my sketch,
just automatically putting the fur in.
[MUSIC]
This big feather.
[MUSIC]
Sometimes you have to turn the page to make a better line.
[MUSIC]
I really like the sound that the pen makes on the paper,
it's like a little scratchy noise.
[MUSIC]
It could be a little straighter hair, man, it's okay.
[MUSIC]
Now, the paint does, I mean the ink doesn't dry automatically, so
you have to be careful not to smudge it as you're working.
[MUSIC]
So I have to kind of turn it while I work on this side.
[MUSIC]
Now, I'm gonna erase the pencil lines later.
[MUSIC]
This is India ink, so it will dry and
it won't smudge later on once it dries.
And also, when you apply water and paint over it later on,
it won't smudge at all or run.
[MUSIC]
All right, I think we got Reepicheep kind of drawn,
let's just add a little bit of texture to him.
[MUSIC]
I'm gonna add a bit of a landscape back here,
some Narnia hills, mountains.
[MUSIC]
Nice clouds.
[MUSIC]
All right, so we are going to start painting, but
first let's take a closer look at an inked version of Reepicheep.
We added some fur to him, and I might go back later and
add some more fur, little few mess ups here and there but it's okay.
And you can see the pencil lines a little bit, so I'm gonna go ahead erase this
[MUSIC]
I'm going to be using acrylic paints, and I went ahead and
squeezed some onto this palette.
This is a stay wet palette, so underneath there is a sponge and
a special palette paper that keeps my acrylic paints moist as I work.
And we have here some greens, some red, yellow,
yellow ochre, and we're actually going to paint Reepicheep,
[MUSIC]
In purple, violet.
[MUSIC]
So let's start by painting Reepicheep.
[MUSIC]
Let's see how dark it is.
Ooh, that's very dark, so we wanna kind of water it down just a little bit, okay?
[MUSIC]
Still a little bit too dark, we'll just keep working.
[MUSIC]
I forgot to put fur on this arm, so we'll just have to go back and
do that a little bit later.
Now, we wanna keep his ears unpainted for
now cuz they're gonna be pink, the inside of the ears.
His hands will be pink, his feet, and his tail,
so next we're gonna go in with some red, water it down.
[MUSIC]
Give him some red flowers here, and
then his tail, and then let's not
forget his feather is a bright red color.
[MUSIC]
Okay, now I'm gonna put some yellow ochre on my brush, and
we're going to give his belt a little bit of yellow and his little circlet of gold.
Now usually, I'll wait a little bit in between adding colors and
let the paint dry.
Now let's mix up some green.
[MUSIC]
Now, acrylic paints are a little different from watercolor in that once they dry,
they don't come back up when you paint over them.
So you can sort of add colors in layers on top of each other,
whereas with watercolors,
if you were to add on top of watercolor, it could sometimes bleed together.
It just depends on what kind of effect you're going for.
[MUSIC]
All right, back to the purple, kind of get it really light.
[MUSIC]
A little bit of yellow ochre to give it more of a gold look,
instead of just yellow.
[MUSIC]
I feel like his face could be just a little bit darker here.
[MUSIC]
All right, and we're gonna let it dry just a little bit, and then once this is
dry I like to go back and add a few more details here and there with my dip pen.
Really, you should let it dry completely before you go in or
the dip pen will kind of smear a little bit, but I usually like to go back.
See, we forgot to put some fur in here so we'll add some fur in the arm.
[MUSIC]
Maybe darken some of the outlines a little bit.
[MUSIC]
I think that looks pretty good for now.
[MUSIC]
Here, we have a little picture of Reepicheep, here is the final one.
Now, if I was doing this for a book, I would probably add a little
bit more detail, probably apply the acrylic paint a little bit thicker.
But this was a fun exercise, let's go ahead and sign it.
[MUSIC]
All right, well,
I hope you had fun following along as we did this painting of Reepicheep.
I hope that you can make your own painting at home.
If you don't have a dip pen or inks or acrylics, you can use any kind of paints,
watercolors, or maybe colored in with crayons or colored pencils.
You can draw maybe another favorite character of yours from the Narnia series,
or any of your favorite children's book characters.
You can see more pictures of Reepicheep in my picture book
biography on CS Lewis called Through the Wardrobe.
And you can read more about Reepicheep in the Narnia Chronicles,
specifically in Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
So I hope you stay safe, stay creative, and we'll see you later.
Bye.
[MUSIC]