Alice in Wonderland Sitting on a Toadstool

Alice in wonderland treatment for girl in tree.
Red toadstool in forest.	Two kids sitting in a tree.
Wood texture effect is applied.	Alice sits on top of a giant toadstool.
I gave this image an Alice in Wonderland appearance (well I think so!) The girl’s dress, long hair, and adventurous demeanour invited such a treatment. The obvious symbol to use for this job was the mushroom. I had only to scale her down to the size of a caterpillar, stick her on top of the fungus, and apply shading. I had to render it into some sort of illustration for the full effect to be achieved; for this I used virtual painter 5 to give it an oil painting effect, then topped it off with a texture layer created with flaming pear’s India ink (inverted and applied as a zero-opacity mask that I embossed for textural depth).
All of that Victorian romanticism gives us a rich vein of iconography that’s easy to tap into. (Toadstools, castles, petticoats, fairies, and all of that enchanted whatnot). And, what is more, people love it. You can turn their little brat into a demure young Victorian lady who wouldn’t dream of staying out half the night getting drunk on cheap imported larger and stoned on the latest super-skunk. Her parents can at least delude themselves, if only momentarily, that the little girl in the picture is a realistic depiction of their beloved daughter (before she fell in with the wrong crowd).

Copyright 2007 PickyPics.com

I gave this image an Alice in Wonderland appearance (well I think so!)