Illustration, The Universe and Everything

More background experiments. Blue this time, the colour all good little boy bears should paint their bedrooms, although it seems it's a little too pale for my scanner to pick up. What I was trying to do here is paint over the various papers - mainly graph/squared paper and draw over the top with coloured pencil. I don't recommend trying to scan graph paper. It just does not work. (Why, I do not know. One of those great Mysteries Of The Universe.)

The paper is so thin it buckles horribly - as you can see in the first scan below - even with really thick gouache, so I tried stretching it.



It worked OK - here is the scan - but I have resigned myself to having to first paint the background with the line drawings, and then creating graph paper myself in PhotoShop to lay over the top once the paint has been scanned. *Huff*.






Here is where I've overlaid the two types of graph paper I created. I stuck Herbert/Hector/whatever his name is finally going to be over the top to see how he might sit with these backgrounds. I think I prefer the smaller-squared graph paper, although there's something less formal and more childlike in the larger squares. Not sure yet. (Click on each image to see enlargements.)