Alice: Madness Returns (once more)

Acrylic on canvas, 200mm x 300mm

Back in 2011, as an edgy teen, I was extremely obsessed with a certain game called Alice: Madness Returns when it was released. For some context, it was my second year living in the UK and I was getting used to the whole idea of being in a completely different culture for so long for the first time. With the setting of this game being closely connected to where I lived (Oxfordshire, where the source material Alice in Wonderland was written), it opened up a door of wonder and curiosity for me to delve into. The game was marketed as a twisted version of the innocent Wonderland we all come to know from Lewis Carroll’s writings, where its state is intrinsically linked to Alice’s mental health. Playing the game, Alice transitions between the sooty streets of Victorian London to her dying Wonderland and back to a padded cell in a straitjacket. Of course, there was an overlying plot behind her struggles to make sense of the world(s) she was in but I shall not be focusing on that today.

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Above are the covers of the game and the artbook. The spirit of ridiculousness has been well adapted by American McGee as well as turning a child’s story into a dark, gruesome and bloody reflection of itself. This was one of the attractions that drew me towards the game as it made me curious to how the places and characters I came to know previously were presented in the game and other media related to it. Naturally, I was not the only one who felt that way as there were plenty who appreciated the game went out of their way to create fan art.

Yoshi Tsutomu (Gjred) took the opportunity to showcase the numerous dresses Alice wore throughout the game as seen above. In this compilation, I was especially mesmerised with this particular one. From a story sense this was Alice before she experienced psychatric episodes in the game, and from an aesthetic point of view Alices calm and “friendly” expressions somewhat conflict with the dark and sinister surroundings made lots of room of thought – is it symbolising the calm before the storm? Or is it something even far more sinister? Whatever it was, there was a certain charm to it.

Thus I decided to do a painting based on this particular fan art and this was the end result (see below). Keep in mind this was still 2011. It was still a period where I was in the early stages of discovering my relatively newfound passion for art and I was nowhere as skilled. With an obsene amount of help to get the skin tones right and on basic human anatomy I managed to paint one of my first canvas paintings and I was really pround of it back then. For almost 9 years it hung in my toilet wall as a trophy.

Fast forward to 2020. The lockdown has been lifted and I’m back home from university for summer. Whenever I went to the loo, Alice was staring as usually, like she had done for the last 9 years. She was not the best painting and certainly not the worst, which gave me the idea to use my experience and skills I honed since then to give Alice a revisit. She totally deserved it after staring at people in the loo for 9 years.

In terms of composition, I decided to stick closer to the source material as it is more complex than a plain background and also a chance for me to challenge my skills. As if that was not enough, I realised that I was completely out of black paint and I could not be bothered to go out to the stores just to get it for this purpose. Since I have been indoctrinated that black paint is the evilest substance in this world, I would just make do with the other remaining colours of the set that I got. As expected, mixing different colours to replace black did give it a more complex tone.

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Straight off the bat, I “messed up” the background since I did not exactly replicate the warm glow of the lamp, but rather it was colder. However, I was quite happy with this accident as it made it look more sinister and even Slytherin-eque in a way. That contrasting with Alice’s pale complexion it made her look as though ethereal, which seemed to add on to the atmosphere that was originally set up by Gjred in his piece.

There were a few more rough bumps towards this piece’s completion. Before I reached the bottom right stage in the collection of stages above, I only had this massive brush which was impossible to fill the details in with. Luckily that was dealt with after I hit the art supply shop to get smaller brushes. More challenging parts of the painting was to make sure the foreground stayed in the foreground and the background in the background; that was more tedious than challenging if anything. I spent quite a lot of time on the face and hands as they required quite a lot of detail. The usual challenges came: trying to get the eyes symmetrical, getting the nose and mouth in the right place, etc. It felt very satisfying to repaint Alice, as I felt it was worth it to go through the trouble to make everything to look right and she looked happy to be given a fresh coat of paint. She now continues stares at people using the loo as usual, except with a more satisfying look to her.

Extra: a comparison between the 2011 and 2020 pieces.

Woah! I didn’t know I can do this!

I took some liberties inserting some easter eggs: as part of my childhood, Bionicle was a huge part of it. To pay tribute to it, I had the island of Mata Nui on the globe behind Alice.