A fight against the skies...

Today, I tried to defy the obvious celestial will, and I failed miserably. The skies were black an grey from threatening clouds... and I wanted to take pictures - pictures of pictures, in fact. In the end, I gave up and just scanned them. there's not so much room for composition or accessorizing, but there isn't much room for white-balance-hair-pulling either.

This linocut I mentionned previously is now up for grabs ! There will only be one like this !
And below is another print now to be found in our shop. It's an intaglio print (meaning the ink is in the grooves of the plate before pressing). The hand-drawn image was acid-etched on a zinc plate. The picture was printed on an ivory velin paper. On a print, there's always some room left on the paper around the plate. The paper is wet when is is run through the press, to it takes the form of the plate and the area around it stays a little raised after it dries. That's something you will only find on an original print. (Lithography is another story, but don't expect me to talk a lot about it - as I said before, it's not my thing)

Between January and June, I kept most of my work focused on fairy tales. this one is an illustration for a greek tale, "The five times fair". It's similar to Snow White, except there's no evil step-mother, there are two jealous sisters instead. And the one telling them that the youngest sister is the fairest of them all is the Sun.

Silly me !

While sketching and coloring, I'm also working on putting a third trial run tarot deck together. I worked on it some yesterday - well today - let's just say : last time I was awake before now. Then I let it dry overnight and went to bed like a good girl. Or so was the plan.
I made the mistake to go have a look at it during the night, to discover that it had gone awry. The wallpaper was getting wavy and all. After that, I unsuccessfully tried to get back to sleep, but my mind was just running in circles, I kept thinking about how to best fix this mess and other options to make that deck. So I got up again.
I *think* I am going to keep working with the current method. Half of deck #3 is now drying between stacks of books. Here's hoping it still looks okay in the morning.
Silly me although thought I had to go buy fixative. Turns out I already did last time I went supplies shopping !
Now I'm trying to get back to sleep, I need it, but I'll leave you with a little previwe of my "Enchanted Forest" sketch.

En parallèle avec mon travail de dessin, je fais des essais pour la troisième version d'essai du jeu de tarot. J'y ai bossé un peu hier - enfin aujourdhui - disons : la dernière fois que j'ai été réveillée avant maintenant. Puis je l'ai laissé à sécher pour la nuit et suis gentiment aller me coucher. Enfin c'était le plan. J'ai commis l'erreur d'y jeter un oeil quand je me suis relevée cette nuit, pour constater que ça n'allait pas du tout. La tapisserie se mettait à faire des vagues, ack ! J'ai bien tenté de me rendormir après ça, mais impossible, mon cerveau surchauffait à se demander comment réparer ça et s'il n'y avait pas de meilleures solutions pour fabriquer le deck. Donc retour au bureau.
Je *pense* que je vais rester sur ma méthode actuelle. La moitié du deck numéro 3 est en train de sécher sous des piles de livres, en espérant qu'elle sera toujours présentable demain matin.
Ma petite tête de linotte était aussi persuadée de ne pas avoir de fixatif. Sauf qu'en fait j'en avais acheté lors de mon dernier passage chez Arteis !
Ce coup-ci, je vais essayer de retourner dormir, j'en ai besoin. Mais je vous laisse avec un petit aperçu du croquis pour "Forêt enchantée".

And with color...

I told you the color version was coming ! The black outlines are worked with a Pentel calligraphy inkbrush, and the color is watercolor. I used up the last sheet of Cotman water colour paper I had for this one, it is a truly remarkable paper to work with a water-based medium. The only problem being it's heavily textured, so it's hard to get good reproductions in print.

Je vous avais bien dit que la version couleur arrivait sous peu ! L'encrage est fait au feutre-pinceau à calligraphie Pentel, la couleur à l'aquarelle. J'ai utilisé ma dernière feuille de papier aquarelle Cotman pour ce dessin, c'est vraiment un support exceptionnel pour travailler avec de l'eau. Malheureusement c'est ausis un papier avec un très gros grain, ce qui rend la reproduction sur papier du dessin un peu compliquée.

Illustration Friday - Adapt

I went back and forth a little and in the end decided to go for this version. The tea-cup lady will get finished as well, don't worry, just not for this week. I'm going to color this one as well - not feeling the greatest this week and subsequently slowed down in my work.
I've been very fond of Goldilocks' story as a kid, and loved the idea of going back to it to illustrate it. What if the little girl had just tried to pretend to be a bear as well ?

Après mûre réflexion, je me suis décidée pour cette version de l'illustration. La demoiselle à la tasse de thé sera finie également, pas d'inquiétude, mais un peu plus tard. Et cette illus aura droit à de la couleur aussi - je ne suis pas très en forme cette semaine et considérablement ralentie dans mon travail de ce fait.
J'adorais l'histoire de Boucle d'Or quand j'étais petite, et j'ai trouvé intéressant d'y revenir pour en tirer une illustration. Et si la petite fille avait tenté de se faire passer pour un ours ?