The blue angel

Dec. 15, 2012  The blue angel arrives

The left side is now appearing in all its glory.  I am still nervous because many of the pencils I will need soon are on back order and were delayed once already.  If I look for a silver lining, it has allowed me to plan a heart for Valentine's Day plus and a picture for my daughter for her birthday (appropriate for cards or prints, but she would get the original). I am also planning to do the same for her siblings, should they be viewing.

Initial planning is something I can do in the middle of the night.  If I get up and lie in bed to think, I will worry about almost anything that my poor wee brain grabs -- bills, things that need repairing, and frustrating events I really can't control for example.  However, if I get up and go over to the drawing board, I can plan and sketch, get tired after about a half hour and go back to sleep.

Look carefully at the my "image of the day". You can see that I do the entire pink ground and then put the lettering over the top.  This is a bit unusual in my work and only succeeds if you have a much darker color to go on top.  It also allows  me to outline the letters first.  In my trial runs I tried using ink for the letters, but it was so opaque that it didn't fit well with the colored pencil. This is not to say it couldn't be used in the future.  There is some irony that I didn't feel ink fit in a place where ink would have undoubtedly been used in a medieval document. Here, artistic vision trumps making a copy.