'Tis done!

It's the usual imaginary Cornish scene, a figment of my tortured imagination. In this my fantasy, we are living in the larger house with the surfboard propped up and the fairy-lit palm tree. I have a lovely big studio down on the quay and there's a pub nearby. Fans of the Cornish Pirates rugby team will be pleased to note a couple of scarves in team colours.

Down by the tree are hubby, son, me and the dog. The old couple walking up towards the church are Martin's parents...this will be our first Christmas without them.

Have a peaceful Christmas, all.

Ready for colour.

Firstly, I must congratulate our 17-year-old lad who yesterday passed his driving test at his first attempt! Well done! Now you can drive me around for a change! :-)

Back to the Christmas card:

I've done a loose black keyline for all the main elements now. It's ready to start 'painting'.

First I drop a dark colour into the background. This helps give a little body to the colours.


Next I start smudging a bit of colour into the sky....

More later!

Christmas card 2007

The 'festive season' is hoving into view with relentless mercilessness and while we're so skint we haven't even started to think about buying presents, I've started to have thoughts concerning the design of our family greetings card. It's something that has evolved slowly over the years and always seems well-received by it's recipients, some of whom are kind enough to frame the card and bear with it all year.
My Christmas cards generally have an underlying theme, probably stemming from fond childhood memories of fifties Christmas Eves. It's always snowy, twilight (so that I can make the most of fairy lights and lit windows and the scene usually looks somewhat Cornish. (I don't need to go into that now, most of you know about the ambition to move there)

With that in mind, I decided to show you how I go about creating such a card, in easy steps.

Above, you see a little scribble, the germ of an idea, done in my teeny sketchbook when I had some time to myself in the rugby club bar. (I've just designed and delivered their Christmas card, too)

At the moment, it's pretty generic, no personal details...it hasn't yet been 'Woollattised'. I've just imported it into my Mac and in my paint programme (Corel Painter) I shall personalise it this evening. You'll have to wait till tomorrow to see, probably.