PBJ Summer Postcard Week!

Can you believe it's July 1st already? Perfect time for a little summer postcard, right?

This little monkey took a long time hanging around my head to get on paper! I sketched a few ideas for our postcard, then used my awesome Twitter pals to get some feedback. Then I painted him, just my usual gouache on hotpress, but thinking I would add a little colored pencil and perhaps ink. I had been experimenting with cut paper, layering a bit. I painted the whole thing and shared it with a critique group - they put a bug in my ear about cutting the monkey out, and layering him. And they were so right!

I did learn that it's best to cut your shapes BEFORE painting, as gouache flakes around the edges. The colored pencil and some touch-up covered up a few rough spots. Also, I worked at actual size which meant the little birdie poking out of the hole in the tree was REALLY small to manage. I used the end of an x-acto to position him just so. I'm sure there are tiny tweezers that collage artists use for things like this.

I painted the background sky on coldpress, which gives it a bit more texture, and those awesome 'real' shadows. Photoshop drop-shadows just can't compete with the real thing. I wish I took more process photos along the way to show, next time I create in this style I definitely will.