Mischief Managed!

There, I did it: the two prizes for vocalion's Artpad contest are ready. Each caused me problems of a different kind, but for the time being (my opinion about my own work tends to deteriorate pretty quickly) I am happy with the results. Here they are:

The Beech Tree was done for _grainne_. It took several days before I had found a posture and a facial expression that felt right to me, and I positively tore my hair out over the landscape. It reminded me of why I usually choose the easy path and keep my backgrounds blank :-). Anyway, this picture needed one, so it had to be done. On the whole, it was a challenging, fulfilling project and I look back at it with tenderness.

Hermione and Severus, commissioned by vanityfair00 was a challenge of a different kind: it not only required me to picture intimacy and interaction between two figures, which is normally something I tend to shy away from; it is also a subject that has been done plenty of times and I wanted my drawing to be different somehow. I went for a fin-de-siècle look in stark black and white. Grimmauld Place was a gift - I adore that house and it offered me the opportunity to add a nice grotesque :-).

Thanks, ladies, for setting me assignments that I would not have thought of myself and that proved exciting to do!