In Chapter 20 Pinocchio encounters an enormous snake: "An immense Serpent lay stretched across the road - a Serpent with a bright green skin, fiery burning glowing eyes, and a pointed tail that smoked like a chimney." Pinocchio tried to step over him "..but he had just raised one leg when the Serpent shot up like a spring.."

The sketch is postcard size, about 10 x 15 cm, and had to be transferred to A4-size.


I use an old computer monitor as a light table.
The digitized sketch can be enlarged to any size necessary. Works fantastic! I roughly duplicate the sketch. Sometimes a bit more precize, for exemple the heads of both the snake and Pinocchio in this drawing.


When the lights are switched back on I finish the pencil drawing. The amount of detail differs with each drawing. Depending on how much detail I need before starting with ink and watercolor. The more expressive the drawing, the less detail I need in the pencil drawing.


Inking and colouring is next. The "pointed tail that smoked like a chimney" was indeed pointy in the sketch, but I had to change that to let the smoke escape from the tail. I made it a bit more chimney-like.


Finally I added some yellow ochre to the background. Not because the drawing really needed it, but for the visual balance of the page layout. The illustration on the next page…


Pinocchio runs around a lot. Driven by youthful enthusiasm or fear of a storm, chased by murderers or released out of prison: Pinocchio is running.
In this chapter "...he raced like a greyhound. As he ran, he was splashed with mud even up to his cap."

The head of each chapter is a short discription of what the chapter is about. It was part of the layout design to add an illustration to each chapter head. For chapter 20 we wanted to use the drawing of Pinocchio waiting on a stone for the snake to go away. (Look for it in the book!)
Because the chapter itself begins with Pinocchio running through the mud, this drawing should be placed on the same page. But there was no room for it. The only way to use it was to put it in the chapter head, but we thought the other drawing was better for that purpose. So this nice mud splatter drawing, unfortunately, had to go.