Not very happy with this one

I've been working on a piece for the exhibition that my class is participating in; we have to make a small piece 10x15cm, (small!), in "naturals" (ie the colours), and the theme is "write of passage".

My god. I'd forgotten how much I detest working to external requirements. Blech. I had some awesome ideas, but none of them are going to fit onto a 10x15 piece of paper - one quarter of an A4 sheet doesn't give you much room to work with.

So I abandoned all of my grand ideas and came up with this. I sat my very old Raggedy Ann doll up on my desk and roughed out a quick sketch of her (complete with stitching on hands and feet!) and a cute little saying about growing into yourself. It's just plain old gouache on canson mi-tientes. I'd forgotten how much a textured paper will drag a pen-tip all over the place, so as a result my spacing is completely up to shit, several of the letters are deformed and I completely misjudged the first line, which is not-so-cleverly-disguised-as-I'd-like-it-to-be.

... and the heart? I'd say I have no idea what I was thinking, but that's a lie. It's there to cover up a big-arsed smudge that appeared right after I'd spent nearly an hour on the drawing. So I wasn't going to start again, and I was going to cover it up any way I could.

I don't like it - it looks like something I would have produced when I first started doing calligraphy. But it's the contingency plan for if I can't rustle up something better between now and Thursday night. Which, with the work week starting (you know it's not so great when you wander in on Monday with the "jobs" section stuffed into your handbag), is looking pretty likely. *shrug* My inner perfectionist is throwing big tanties right now, but I'm just gonna bitch slap her til she shuts the hell up.

Comments

[Jejune]

Ah, it takes me back to graphic design college, before the days of computers... assignments hand rendered, then stuffed up, and redone at 3am...
I used to do a lot of calligraphy too. Love it. So glad you're enjoying it (well, mostly ;)