Had a great talk with the wonderful Murray and he pointed up that silhouettes were of value sending me to a site of an artist, Diana Bryan who uses the form amusingly and of course, to the one of the kings of styles, Mr. John Alcorn (example shown above). What a delight! So, encouraged, I am going to bop around a bit on this and see if anything comes off the pen.
Am still horsing around with the fu dog. It was missing something, so I output the illustration and starting working right on top of the output. From that, it actually happened versus the sometimes frittery thing that happens with trace (albeit, other great things happen with trace...so no malice or ill will there). I will post the mid step for you to see...but a bit more twiddling with it...laying some short gradients in the corners and behind the point of the heart (at top) and maybe a bit of tone behind the heart. Might look at some vector rays in black just to see what happens...But putting this image in a background grounds the image and from the silhoutte image I formerly had (and liked and could have stopped with), this image has gone another place with the whomping up of the background. You can tell me what you think, okay?
Went to the Flax sale yesterday afternoon. Its sort of a rite of spring--women stripped down to bathing suits or tank tops and running shorts, tearing off their top layers and diving into boxes fiilled to the top with linen clothing. The ladies manning the show, wearing bright tees and facemasks due to the heavy linen residue, pushing shopping carts of tried on clothes, back to the bins, separating this type from that--and watching a new batch of box divers, grab and try on the garments as they are returned. There were garment resellers, ebayers who had piles, literally piles 48" tall that they were developing in sizes, each shirt/dress/pants/etc. gently laid one on top of the other... Thousands of dollars worth of new clothing which they could easily double. The prices are good. Normally a Flax shirt can go for around $80. At the sale, they are $25.-$30. so you can see why the frenzy is so exciting. And, you can also see why Flax is the "look of Ithaca"--which is terrific as the ithaca ladies have great alternative style and put this look to the test with a mix and match that is not "country club". I was very restrained and bought a few things... figured I would push the old stuff to use...and be discriminating this year (which is hard...but the right thing to do).
We are off to the Luckystone for spring cleaning, getting rid of the plaster dust, the litter and mess that happened with the great pipe freeze. Gotta go. Kinder are here needing to be packed into the car before we lose momentum.