Dame Doodle Blue

If you think this looks like a lot of work, you betcha! Especially when you consider that this is version 2. Before I started I roughly knew what I wanted and version 1 [link] started out well. I began with the bigger lines and then filled in the details a bit by mindless doodling.

Unfortunately mindless doodling doesn't alwasy agree with me, I work better when I have a clear plan and in the end (after about 8 hours) I just wasn't satisfied with the look. Add to that too much pencil smudges and the next evening I decided to redo the lot.

Tracing all the good bits with blue pencil and adding new stuff with red [link] the second attempt was much more to my liking. My inking hand still doesn't agree with me (a few days later) but we all have to suffer for our art

Now I thought about colouring this with coloured pencil using many coulours (after scanning, cleaning up and printing), but part of me also wanted to see what it looked like using limited colours (as this is my preferred way of working) and the combination blues with a bit of green kept springing to mind. Thus I spent a bit more time in Photoshop and the end result is that much to my liking that I may just forget about the pencils.

I still liked to see what the picture would look like in warm colours, so a red version [link] was quickly made. For comparison I also put the 2 together in a mirrored version. [link]

For the record, the traditional part took me HOURS, the digital part only 15 minutes. [addition] But I've changed the category nonetheless, as my previous decision started a whole discussion I was not prepared for. Personally I don't care whether something is listed as traditional or digital, I see the categories more as a guideline than a rule, so to prevent any future arguments I've changed it. I just want to show the piece and that's that