Oh, Let's Go Fly a Kite

I sent three cards last week.  The first two you've already seen, the third was for my Mother's boyfriend.  My Son calls him Grandpa, though he technically isn't he's taken on the roll with aplomb.  He likes flying kites, as does my mother, so the logical thing to do was a card of someone flying a kite.  Something as carefree as flying a kite didn't feel right having an overworked card, so I decided on something light and simple.  Japanese brushwork sprang to mind, and while the end result isn't as loose and natural as that tends to be I like it all the same.

And there you have it. Given how minimalist it is I don't really have much to say about the process, but I'll give it a go anyway.

Firstly I knew almost exactly the composition and angle I wanted the card from, so I started sketching figures in the rough pose I wanted. Turns out it's a lot harder than I was expecting to get right. As an experiment I tried the opposite at one point and did the view down from the kite, which worked out almost right away; typical. Anyway, I finally got more or less what I wanted (top left) and scanned it in.

 After scanning it in I took it into Artrage and started drawing over it using the pen tool.  For a few small fits I switched to using the Oils brush as that allows a nice fade out if you load the brush lightly.  This went very smoothly all things considered, and in retrospect I probably could have done it on the paper to begin with as I don't think I used Undo once.  I wish I'd done the kite lines a little thiner in retrospect, but it didn't occur to me at the time.

After that I just painted over it with the colours, mostly with the roller.  I went mostly for pastel shades, trying to point the angles toward the figure, and then using a splash of more vibrant colour for the kite itself.  In theory this, along with the lines, will draw your eye back and forth between the two, though I hadn't consciously realised that until after the fact; you can let me know if my theory is correct.

Anyway, the whole thing turned out pretty much as I wanted it too, and quite close to what I was picturing in my head (a rarity), so even though I'm not totally happy with it I do like it quite a bit.