'greetings'

School holidays (including Haloween) means that I have taken a break for a week.

This week I came back to my 'greetings' postcard project, with no ideas at all. At first I was so frustrated that I started feeling like a clown. Hence my first sketch:

This gave me a starting point for another sketch, describing my working conditions on the kitchen table etc:

I was supposed to be 'in the style of' Quentin Blake.  I liked it as a starting point and moved on to more ideas:

To get to this point, I had cut and pasted the paper (didn't know how to do this on the computer), and realised that the image of my son (with the axe) in his halloween costume reminded me of the boy in 'Where the wild things are'

I tried to 'adopt and adapt' some elements
like the trees, so they would be obvious
clues for people who know these books.
I tried to add shading with pencil marks
that would emulate his pen style, not sure
this was entirely successful.

Maurice Sendak

So here is my finished picture. It was made by printing the previous image in progress on art paper, then using gouache, pencils, and a pen (felt tip kind made for pen and ink).I made my image bigger than a postcard for putting in details more easily (25 x 17cm).

I'm having so many problems with this technology, I am wasting so much time with my beginner's mistakes! Here I was trying to show my finished image, plus the fact that although I can now control the size of the image in print, on paper - when it comes to what goes on the screen, how to place it, and make it in the same proportions as the original, it's the system controlling me rather than the other way at the moment. So this image should be 16.5 x 11.5 cm. I have show two here. The first one is scanned and added here. The second has been resized with photoshop elements first, and I have asked the computer to show it at that size, but look what I get (added as 'original size'). I have left it as an example of my continuing learning and battling.

A last image I want to put here this week, is an image in progress. Painted in acrylics, but I will continue in oils. It represents practice and more. I was working on  resemblance. I am painting from a family picture. The one in the back is me, and this picture captures a long, long story which means a lot to me. I didn't realise how much until I started. I think I ought to dig deep and see if I can use whatever lurks in there for my own development. Here it is: