Each year (since 2010) the St Michaels Art League (SMAL) has had a banner program. Artists are invited to present artwork that will be scanned, then printed onto 'weather proof' material. The banners hang on the telephone poles along Talbot Street - which is our 'Main Street'.
I have blogged about my banners for many years. You may remember "Mikey" my St. Michaels crab who tries to "Celebrate St. Michaels", our annual theme, in all sorts of ways.
I wasn't sure what I wanted Mikey to do this year so I went back to my file and began to look at all the banners from past years. I found the sketch below...It had been an idea that I never followed through on. Maybe this year...
I began with a rough sketch...capturing some of what I had done before and adding a line to the life ring.
It progressed from there...to this. This was all done on drawing paper - not watercolor paper -so the watercolor paint just wrinkled up everything. I was trying to get an idea of color and balance.
So, I switched to my watercolor paper. Almost all my previous Mikeys have had some sort of hat and I wanted to fill the space between Mikey's 'head/shell' and the life preserver ring.
Now I had this...
I showed it to my artist critic friends and we had a discussion about adding any kind of light wash background to make sure the hat and ring would stand out from the white paper. Several of us just like the crispness of the primary colors and the white.
After putting it aside for several days and looking at it from across the room (no way could I get it 30 feet high!), I decided not to do a wash.
Instead, I added more shading and a bit more ink drawing around the hat, ring, and line. Mikey is ready to be scanned!
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