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Here you go, on an adventure, this should be fun. Stretching one's style is always just that, an adventure. As you go there you must take along all the good things that you have and work on the not so good. You are very much a shape and texture person and here you are using neither which leaves you way out on a limb but, even though, it is not a bad image.

The concept is great, I understand what you are saying and the woman does look wistful. You have some interesting lines starting to happen in the woman, her wild teacup which I love, and the sun. I can see you struggling with the background, as before you would have filled it with some lovely texture, now you are a little lost without it, same with the clouds which normally would probably be puffy. If you really want to work this style some more I would get more line in there. Transform what you know about texture into line and fill that background, maybe the dress too. You could try not outlining the clouds but just have them open spaces in the background texture.

The line that you have has a feeling of Edward Goreyness, it may be those eyes, it may be that she looks like she is in a bathtub and I am wondering "what is she doing in that bathtub with all her clothes on?". The more I look at it, the more I want to talk to this woman. That's a good thing.

Hope this is not too negative as I don't mean to be but criticism at this point in starting a new style , I think, is very helpful as we sometimes have trouble seeing our work especially if we shift to someplace different. Just remember that you are a 'texture expert' so take it with you and use it, whether it be fabric or line.

Good luck, looking forward to seeing more,
HildaRose

Great comments, HildaRose! I appreciate what you're saying. I have a hard time with adding texture with line and not getting the image too busy. How do you handle this? With different line widths?

I never thought about the bathtub...now I wish it were the bathtub- would make for a great story! All the more interesting...unfortunately that wasn't my idea (darn!)

Another unfortunate, is that I don't have any other pens...just one gel pen. I'll see what I can do for IF's Citrus with adding textures.

Thanks!

Hi, Stacia,
I use one pen - Micron .005 - and build my line. Gives it a looser feel and varies the line width. I guess I didn't mean texture, maybe pattern. Was thinking more of a William Morris pattern on the wall, same but different for dress.

If too busy you can try a couple of things -
- in Photoshop you can either select and reduce background line to grey and work emphasize with colour background
- use very fine line for background pattern and heavier for woman

I worked with an illustrator once that built patterns with fine stipple dots - eg. sky was filled with small spiral swirls - was very effective. It was only black and white but still had a lot of dimension.

Take a look at some Edward Gorey, he has great contrast and he just uses short lines. Try this page:

http://libweb.hawaii.edu/uhmlib/exhibits/images/goreyPoster1_webpage.gif

If I knew how to link from here I would but I can't so I won't.

Is it possible to join this blog?

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John

p.s. nice work!