The DOODLES, DESIGNS, and aRT of CHRISTOPHER BURDETT: Wicket W. Warrick - Star Wars

In December of last year I first shared with you my Wicker W. Warrick painting for the Star Wars LCG. Today I have for you the process and steps that went into making this piece. The thing about this piece is that it is nearly two years old now. I worked on it at the end of 2014 and now at the end of 2016 I am sharing the process. I have come a long way with my traditional work in this time, so in some ways this is a look back at how I use to paint, and not how I currently paint. To start things off, here is how the final painting of Wicket turned out...

Wicket W. Warrick

Star Wars LCG - Solo's Command

14 x 11 - Acrylic and pencil on board

Art Director - Zoe Robinson

Original for sale over on my web store!

As always this piece started with some thumbnails. I played around with some image of my action figures and worked on some compositions. There was a very specific moment from Return of the Jedi I was going for, so I focused on trying to capture that moment and the emotional response I had to it. Here are how the thumbnails turned out...

Wicket W. Warrick - Thumbnails

Obviously, option "C" was the winner. Not sure if could disagree with this now and I certainly did not disagree at the time. "B" may have been interesting to work on, but "C" is clearly the winner of this bunch. Now that I had an approved thumbnail is was time to move forward on the drawing...

Wicket W. Warrick

Star Wars LCG - Solo's Command

17 x 14 - Pencil on paper

Art Director - Zoe Robinson

Original for sale over on my web store!

The drawing was approved without comment and it was time to get to work on the painting. As I mentioned above I was aiming to capture a very specific mood and moment from Return of the Jedi with this painting. I wanted to represent in my own way the moments leading up to Wicket first meeting Princess Leia. I watched that section of the film and looked at a lot of frames from it to get a feel for the color and lighting of that moment. Hopefully, by the time I was done with my painting I managed to get a little of that on screen magic I was aiming for.

Wicket W. Warrick - Reference

I had a drawing, I had my reference, I had a plan, and I had a painting to make. This one came together fairly quickly and was rather straight forward. There is loads of reference of Wicket out there and I was working from images from the movie for color and mood. It was all a matter of getting the piece made and not making a mess of it. Like I said, this was from two years ago now and I was still (kinda still am) intimidated by the materials and I sometime feel that it could all go horribly wrong in a second. Here is the painting coming together in twelve easy steps...

Wicket W. Warrick - Process Steps

Here is the painting coming together in a animated format. Thankfully there were no gaffs or errors along the way that need to be addressed and I planned out everything in advance. Not a very exciting story of the process, but sometime that is okay.

Wicket W. Warrick - Animated Process

I will point out the blood. With all of my Ewok pieces I try to add a bit of blood. Ewoks after all are carnivores and were planning on eating Luke, Han, and Chewie. I see them a competent hunters that take pride and enjoyment in the hunt. It is survival, but it is also something they enjoy doing. There is blood on the top of Wicket's spear and a splatter trail of blood on the log and plants that he is following. Wicket wounded something and now he is closing in on the prey, little does he know he is about to run into a princess.

Here again is the final painting of Wicket and the final production card that it was used on...