Dogs Skating Update

Hey. Thought I'd better check in with something, even if its not finished art. Had a lot going on this week, but in between all of that I've been working on the dogs skating. You can see the first rough ideas and how its progressed, and where we left off last time, here ~
http://drawingafineline.blogspot.com/2014/02/dogs-skating-work-in-progress.html
(or, just scroll down to the last post)

Before, they were in a kind of long-ish horizontal layout. But I thought "hey! I might want to make prints of this, so let's make it 8 x 10 instead." So that's what I did. I reorganized all the little doggies in a more 8 x 10-ish clump. 

I also made the wiener dog leaning forward a bit more. I did this with Photoshop, and you can see how I haven't erased out the second head on him yet. I love working in layers in PS, and how you can make a new layer, try something, hide it if you're not sure, delete it, or whatever.

And here's a more cleaned up version of the drawing above. Its ready to be transferred to the final paper. Or should be. Except something kept nagging at me. I found all kind of things to do except that. Like laundry, other cleaning, cat chores, a nap, shopping, knitting ... something in me wasn't happy with this yet. 

First, I took out the guy 'walking' the dogs, because you know what? I didn't like the leashes, and I also figured that if the dogs were smart enough to be able to put on clothes and skates and you know, ice skate, they didn't need to be on leashes.

I rearranged the dogs a bit too, to make them interact with each other more. 

And then it hit me. It needed KITTIES! 

So I sketched in some little furry guys in the snow behind the dogs. One is about to throw a snowball, and his buddy is hiding behind a big stockpile of ready-to-go snowballs. Another one is making a snowman. One is skating out onto the ice, and another is skiing.

Here it is, tightened up a bit. The dogs are totally oblivious, of course. They're just out for a nice little skate. The cats, on the other hand  ...

This makes a much better illustration, with more storytelling. It has a lot more going on, with the cats, and is more fun.

This has been transferred to the final paper and is being colored as we speak. I've taken out the skiing guy - somehow he wasn't working for me. But who knows, he could always end up back in. 

I'm also working on my new website, S...L...O...W...L...Y, but surely. It'll get there. I've ordered some new nice paper and colored envelopes (oooh, fancy) to make some cards for my etsy shop. I know, I've said before that I hate making cards, and I do. BUT. I would really like to have some other options in the shop besides prints, and I thought some card sets would be nice. 

So that's what I'll be up to over the next week, no doubt with a lot of help from this guy (when he's not doing this) ~