Last summer, I was trying to work on developing a character for a silly idea of a comic where the cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland gets stuck in our world after chasing a normal rabbit or something silly like that. This was one of my very first attempts at a character concept. I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to make the stripes look cool on his face though - something I never actually worked out to my satisfaction.

With the cheshire, I wanted to try to preserve the cool, calm, and ever-so-practical insanity that makes him so fun. One simple way of doing that, I found, was to draw his eyes as if he was extremely mad (angry mad, not crazy mad), and then give him the classic cheshire smile. The contrast was definately in the direction of the effect I was aiming for.

Though not art related, the biggest problem I encountered, besides trying to properly portray him visually, was the dialog. The cheshire has a very unique way of speaking that is logical, confusing, and riddled in a way where the meaning always feels like it's just out of reach, lying somewhere in a part of your mind you've never wanted to let loose. That, and there seems to be a constant malevolent undertone to his words. Unfortunately, I never was able to recreate that to my satisfaction, and along with the issues with drawing him, I scrapped the idea (at least for now).

Anyone who's read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass will easily recognize all the references. It's nothing awfully clever, but I've always been an Alice in Wonderland fan and I couldn't resist putting some stuff in. While the overall drawing isn't that smashing to me, I was quite proud of how the Drink Me bottle and the liquid turned out.