Drawing a Fine Line : Happy

“Happy” comes in many flavors.

There is the “reading a letter and seeing photos of loved ones” happy.

I’m doing a major edit on this illustration (which I showed you in the last post). I’ve added Mr. Mouse’s wife, and embellished the ‘story’ quite a bit. He is still reading a letter, but now there are photos included. Mrs. Mouse is looking at one (no doubt of a Mouse grandchild or other special near-and-dear, and has her hand on her chest in that “My! how he’s grown!” or “Look how beautiful she is!” or gesture.

There is also some stamp collector busy-ness going on there. You can see how I work here – layers of tissue, taped one on top of the other, with edits done, and re-done, and re-done, until its right. Lots of fiddling with the exact placement of things, overlaps, angles, etc., all to make it interesting and a good design. Its getting there, and hopefully I’ll have finished art to show next time.

Then there’s “YAY! Gay Marriage is finally legal all across the Land!” happy.

I did some creative editing on my striped candy colored pencil drawing to make it into a whole rainbow, in honor of the Gay Pride rainbow theme.

Below is the original drawing. I used Photoshop to duplicate a piece of it, then did a lot of flopping and reversing and erasing and fiddling to get it to look like two more candies balancing on top. Then I used the “replace color” thing in the Adjustments menu to make them blue and purple. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. It’s still all my drawing, just with some changes made.

I’ve made prints available in my etsy shop, in a whole bunch of sizes.

These are some of my print layouts, all ready to go. I do layouts of the art in different sizes, all on 8.5″ x 11″ paper, with trim marks. Here you see the ACEO, 5″ x 7″, and 4″ x 6″ sizes all ready to print out.

And last but not least, there’s the “My art won an award!!” happy.

An Award of Excellence!! I’m so proud of my little Berry Tart.

This drawing almost didn’t get finished. I did this last Summer, and wanted to enter it in the UArt Open Exhibit. The deadline was approaching, but I came down with the weirdest mystery illness that involved a lot of vertigo (where the level in your head goes wonky and you feel like you’re going to tip over). I had that on and off for weeks. I’d work on this, then have a spell and have to go lie down. I finally finished the day before the deadline to submit art to the show – but because it was so close, I couldn’t mail in the entry, and instead had to drive it over to the UArt store downtown and deliver it in person. I opted to drive the slower city streets route rather than the freeway, just in case. I made it there OK, and thankfully found parking right in front. There was a bit of a queue though at the counter, and while I waited my turn I felt myself start to go . . . I had a mild panic, thinking I’d topple over, but just in time it was my turn, and I handed over my entry packet to a nice man who wished me a hearty “Good luck!”. And I was out the door and into the car, where I was OK again, since I was sitting. And I made it home again, slowly.

So long story short, the art did get accepted into that show (along with my Molasses Cookie, which won an award!), then came home again, where its been sitting in a closet all nice and safe until I decided to enter it in this State Fair show. There are some other really stunning entries in the colored pencil division of the show, so I was surprised and extra happy to find out mine had won a special award.

Here is the complete list of show winners, if your’e interested.

So that’s about it for me, here. Happy Summer!

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