Lower Largo Part 2

So it was last year and it was approaching my Mum's birthday and as usual I was completely and utterly brassic, obviously my solution to the lack of funds to buy a showy gift was to make one, and here is what I came up with...

This was supposed to be a picture of our ex-house.  My parents had just sold it and moved to France, and I had moved down south and I thought it would make a nice present and remind them of home a bit.  It wasn't really on a rock in the middle of the sea, but the cats were ours and thats Robinson Crusoe in the corner, he came from our village..sort of..full story here.

Me being me though I was never very happy with this picture, I always saw it as bigger and better than it was, and with some colour in there, but I got distracted by other things and I never got around to making another version of it until this summer when my stepfathers birthday was coming around and I was still skint and so I began on this one.....

 

Of course I didn't finish it in time, and then I didn't finish it in time for my Mum's birthday this year either, very fortunately the air traffic controllers of France got together and decided to help me out, or perhaps they wanted more money or something, and Mum's birthday visit was delayed for a week, phew!

So last week I presented them with this one and the original, a birthday present that was more than a year in the making!  I think they liked them though.

I'm very much more pleased with this version than I was with the first, and seeing them beside each other it really amazed me how much my drawing style has changed in the space of a year, this feels much more refined, definitely more like what I was aiming for in the first place.

Does anyone else make rather than buying for family birthdays? I'm sure everyone else is better at getting their gifts there on time then I am though :)

Happy, happy Wednesday loves xxx