Snow White and Sketching

I usually blog on the topics of positive self-esteem and body image.
But today, I feel like just sharing some artwork and personal thoughts.

I am working on the illustrations for another book.
It is progressing incredibly slowly, as I work full time and have a family/house/garden/students that also demand my attention. I often get quite discouraged because I don’t have much time to devote to my art, except late at night when I am tired (ok, exhausted!) or on the weekends when I also have a zillion competing chores to do (including trying to promote my current book, More to Love.)

My poor husband has to deal with my blue moods, and is always finding little ways to cheer me up. Last night he announced he had a Netflix surprise for me: the Blu-Ray version of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. I hadn’t seen Snow White for decades. We never had the videotape version (my sons were not interested) and I only vaguely remembered it from seeing it on TV as a child.

I was fascinated and enthralled at the beauty of this movie!
It is truly a work of art.
Every single background is a gorgeous hand-painted watercolor illustration, something I had never noticed as a kid. And the animation: every single creature, object and character moves with such fluidity and grace, including the shadows, water and reflections! If you’ve only ever seen modern animation, where just the mouth moves, or the eyes blink, where the secondary characters are frozen while the main character acts, then this is a revelation. And Snow White herself is an innocently drawn girl, not an overly sexualized creature like so many of the princesses and dolls that currently flood the toy stores. (note: just overlook her old-fashioned high pitched voice and singing style!)

But what completely fascinated me were the “deleted scenes” in the bonus feature:
Pencil tests and sketches, without any of the color or finishing touches!
You can literally see the hands of the artists, as they scribbled and moved things around.
Multiple lines suggest the thought process as revisions were made on the fly, and even the roughest-of-the-rough ideas for the initial storyboards showed the spark from which the final product flowed.
If you are an illustrator, then this is a do not miss part of the disc!

So anyway, this morning, while I stayed late in bed with my coffee and my sketchbook,I started scribbling my own ideas for an illustration about becoming independent and self-reliant. I chose “learning how to use tools and fix something” as a symbol for those positive qualities.
Here are my initial scribbles (some of them) and my rough for the final composition, where I’ve rearranged the idea from focusing on the action of the tool, to the concentration of the woman on the task. While I am in no way comparing myself to the Disney artists, I hope that at least some of you will enjoy seeing the messiness behind the final, cleaned up versions of my illustrations.

note: It just occurred to me that instead of the “little men” fixing things, this illustration shows the “princess” fixing things.
PS: as always, your comments are encouraged and much appreciated!