Illustration Friday - Afterwards

Originally this was started as an idea for a contest on Red Bubble that asked for an illustration of a poem, conveniently the theme of Illustration Friday this week - Afterwards - also fits in perfectly with my idea.

The poem is this one -

Time Does Not Bring Relief: You All Have Lied

by Edna St. Vincent Millay 

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   

And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   

But last year’s bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   

There are a hundred places where I fear   

To go,—so with his memory they brim.   

And entering with relief some quiet place   

Where never fell his foot or shone his face   

I say, “There is no memory of him here!”   

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

It's such a sad, heart achingly unhappy story and I hope that I managed to capture the mood of it here.  The background was black ink thrown in a slapdash manner at some cold press water colour paper, 11x16, with lots of water and much splattering which I enjoy greatly (although afterwards I had to clean quite a lot of it off of the kitchen which I don't enjoy so much) The ever so sad lady was drawn on to tracing paper in ink and then painted on the reverse before getting down to the nitty gritty and adding all the detail on the front.  The background details were added lastly with black and white ink.

I've really fallen for the tracing paper technique, I suspect I'm going to be using it quite a bit in the future, especially seeing as I had to buy a pad of 50 sheets from the super expensive town centre art shop this week.  I'm so disorganised!  Hopefully next time i'll be using it for some slightly more cheerful subject matter though!  Happy Thursday! XXX