Greetings from... - Lourdes Postcard

To start this postcard I scanned in and traced my own drawing of the statue of the virgin Mary. I felt like this was better than tracing directly over a photograph because this felt more like my own work as the lines I was following had been hand drawn. 

When adding smaller deals such as the creases in the fabric and the beads, I found it difficult because I couldn't see through the shapes. Instead of changing my chaps to have no fill, I altered the opacity settings to make the image easier to see underneath. When adding the beads I was initially planning on using white circles but this wouldn't stand out enough against the off white cloths. Instead I felt that using an outline would give  better impression of a sphere as it could mimic the shadow on the shape. 

I played around with varying line strokes and decided that the one on far right shows the curve of the bead more. 

I selected everything I had drawn so far aside from the head and beads and reflected it all. The shapes needed some slight tweaking and adjusting to make sure that everything matched up correctly. 

Seeing as my other postcards are focussed around the head of the figure, I started to do the same with this one but I realised that this doesn't show the key parts of the statue enough (hands, beads and blue cloth). I think the fact that these things are shows in the image is more important than all of the heads being in the centre of the page. The four postcards will still work as a set because of the symmetry and because there is a central figure in all of them. 

I tried to draw out the shape of the cathedral using shape but I was struggling to get the proportions right. I imported a photo of the cathedral to make sure the proportions were right and then I added in the detail of the windows and arches. I wanted this to be kept simple so I stuck to using white and red to force me to be selective with detail. I chose white and red because this will be against a blue background and this will be a subtle hint of the french flag.

The red crosses were not clear against the blue background so I changed them to white for a higher contrast of tone. 

Taking inspiration from the photos of the grotto, I tried to recreate the rocky surface of the surrounding cave with these lines in the background but I think they make it look like water. 

Adding more jagged lines are starting to make it look more rock like. 

I am not yet happy with the background but I have noticed that the statue looks quite washed out so I have darkened the grey areas and added the blue cloth which I had previously forgotten to include. 

Making the background grey does make it looks more like rocks but it also makes the postcard look more dull as a whole and it takes away from the idea of using red white and blue to represent France.

Final Postcard