We didn't get to Trier yesterday - the weather wasn't that great - so we went shopping up in Globus instead. When we lived in Ireland and we used to come here by car, we loved Globus, but now we're living here it's just a shop (a big one though)...... This huge shopping complex along with Lidl and Aldi and the Place Where We Buy Catfood, has been built up on one of the huge meanders of this old river. The great thing is, is that from a lot of angles, you would never know that all these shops were up there at all. The land between the meanders is so high because the river has cut so deep, that looking up from the riverbank you would never guess of the treasure trove of shopping stuff up there just waiting to be discovered......
Well it zapped all my creativity yesterday anyway.
This weekend in Ediger-Eller, is the Heimat & Weinfest Festival. And the weather's been really bad - it's not cold, but it's been raining and cloudy and dull. It's such a shame because a lot of people have put a lot of work into this Festival. There are wine stalls for people to taste the lovely Mosel wine, the fountain by the Tourist Information has been converted into a Bar - there are also stalls and food places and a kiddie carousel - and it's been raining and raining..... If the sun was shining there would be hundreds of people here - I hope that it clears up this evening (it's looking a bit better as I write this)...And there is still all day tomorrow...... It's some kind of Chair Festival (a Stolgang I think it is), but I'll find out a bit about it first before I start going on about it.
Anyhow, I'm sorting out the layout of my Halloween picture - Here's a couple of pictures to show how I've started this painting - but these are my first pictures on this blog so if they come out a bit too small, too big or a bit crooked, you know that I'm only making it all up as I go along.
Of course everything starts as an idea - so I got together a couple of photos as a reference and then started to fit them into what was already in my head. I'll put the first picture in here and see what happens....
Well, that seems to have worked O.K. except that the lettering is now typing from the centre out, but I suppose you can't have everything....
Anyway, this 'Graphic' ( I knew an artist in Ireland who would use this as a bad word) shows the photo I decided to use as a starting point plus my first layout with a little photo of Cochem Reichsberg (that's castle to ye and me) which I want to put in the background. The other photos are a reference for eyes and fur patterns - you have to get the eyes right or nothing else works.
So here are my layouts - experimenting with the height of the hillside behind Wilbur, then thinking that the size of the picture itself would be better for being a bit taller, then changing the shape of his lovely fluffy face (remember this is a Halloween picture) then getting the eyes right.....I'll probably start sketching this out on the painting board this evening - just rough for now, because I'll want to sleep on the eyes and see the whole thing fresh tomorrow. A good way to see if the composition is right is to look at it in a mirror, or to scan it into your computer and flip it over. If it looks good the 'wrong way around' then it looks good.
I use my trusty computer (we're THIS close) for all my design work, so it's great to use it for my paintings as well - it's a great help for getting the size right and changing the composition without having to keep tracing everything out (though I have over a dozen print-outs at this stage already). It's also good, once I've finally decided on the composition I like best, to print it out on vellum (or some kind of see through 'paper' (I had the urge to use substrate there but I didn't, seeing that I can't even centre this up.) Then I can use the old fashioned pencil to rub over the back of the print-out, then transfer to the acrylic board by tracing over the important lines the right way around. That's for tomorrow anyway.
H. has just announced that Dinner Is Served, so I best be off. Lamb (which doesn't taste much like lamb to me), lovely local spuds, a bit of veg (from before-mentioned Globus) and a bottle of Theisen's Zehnthofschoppen Feinherb. One of the best wines in town.
And the sun's come out.
Cheers!
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