12WC, week 4

Oh..... this past week was hectic and I did not have a lot of time to work... the task was to complete 2 pieces.  I work so slowly as it is, what with the fussing and all... but I did manage to get a good amount of work done on one piece, and a sketch for another.  The first piece was another version of the page that I posted last (goldfinches flying over little girl).  Here are my drawings for the new version, first:

I used different (more interesting, I thought) poses for the birds, added berries to the leaves, and, at the suggestion of Justin on the 12WC forum, added some foliage to 'encircle' the girl... I took another piece of Justin's advice (thanks muchly, Justin!), and adjusted the position of the lead bird's head, thusly:

(now, it appears that he is looking at the berries, which are undoubtedly tasty and not poisonous!)

I've painted the birds and the leaves; that just leaves me the girl and a wash for the lawn:

(the girl is not visible here; she is still in pencil.  Just a reminder, she looks like this):

I am much, much happier with the birds in this version.  I love gouache!  I'm able to get such great detail with it, and the colours are extremely vibrant and I can mix any colour or variation thereof that I require.  Paint!  Coloured pencils are great, but I love paint...

...the next step once the girl & grass are finished (which won't take long) is the pattern.  The pattern must be transferred onto rice paper, painted, and then pasted on to the page.  Luckily, it seems as though it won't be a huge space that I will be covering...also, I'm considering the possibility of using the pattern itself as a 'cloud' motif- that is, leaving a certain amount of space as a solid 'sky'.  Work reduction, hurrah!  Once again, this is the pattern- remember that I will be painting it in colours; it will not be b &w as it is here:

I did change my mind after all about the second piece- I decided to nix the Hans Christian Andersen and go with an Arab fairy tale.  I'll post the pencil drawings of that soon, very very soon, along with a description on all the gruesome details of the story.  (Sorry, my sketches right now are not only very rough, I also cut a couple of them into pieces to try the different elements together- not very suitable for scanning!)
                     ...back soon!