Some folks have a weird idea that boys won’t read stories that feature girls as heroes. I suspect that the boys who have that problem were already indoctrinated with that thought by their parents before they’d learned to read. One of my early role models was a little girl from Kansas who, when dropped in a foreign land, didn’t cry or fuss she just picked herself up and set off for home. Not because she missed it really. Dorothy Gale wanted to get home so that her Aunt and Uncle wouldn’t worry about her. She slapped a lion, made some good friends, killed a couple of witches and overthrew a wizard. All before her eighth birthday.

She went back four more times before finally bringing Aunt Em and Uncle Henry with her and settling down in Oz on the fifth excursion. She wasn’t anything special. She wasn’t an outcast or a weirdo or a extraordinarily talented. She wasn’t a chosen one. There were no prophecies of her coming. She was just determined, smart, practical and knew how to look out for her friends.

I hope you’re fond of Oz, or at least Oz Squad, because I’m going to be spending the next few (many) days posting the series of mini-illustrations I’m doing for this project. And I’ll admit right now that I’m spacing out the stages of the illustration process into daily updates because, at the moment, I’m still working on the art. If I manage to get far enough ahead of the game I’ll post the process as a single update instead of doing it over the course of days.

Right now I’ll be keeping to one step per post per day. Today’s post is, like the Scarecrow’s series, a bit farther along than it would have been if I’d been thinking ahead. The art here has already had the main inking done.