2007-06-03 Illustration Friday -- Pair-a-Dice -- 'Your Paradise'

2007-06-03 Illustration Friday -- Pair-a-Dice -- 'Your Paradise', originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

I simply cannot resist an Illustration Friday pun. The topic this week is 'Your Paradise'. So I just had to give you a 'pair of dice' hanging from some car mirror.

But I didn't want it to be just ANY car in ANY old town. I wanted it to be a really classy car in an awesome place.

So I went trawling Flickr, using the Flickr Photo Finder, and found two stunning reference pics.

The car is Carl Palmer's pic of a Rolls Royce. It's titled 'Wedding Car', and he's released it under a Creative Commons 'Attribution -- Share-Alike' license. Thanks Carl. Rock and Roll(s)!!!

The town is based on a pic of 'Streets of St Andrews1' by Maciej Lewandowski. He's released it under the same license as Carl: a Creative Commons 'Attribution -- Share-Alike' License. Ultra-scrumptious pic, Maciej. Thanks!

I've tried to use the strong diagonals of the roofs sloping top left down to the car to try and draw attention to the dice in the window.

But I suspect I made the two passersby a little too dark. So they form a strong focus point for the eye.

I could always post-rationalise and say I intended this effect. Kinda along the lines of, 'Yeah... it makes the dice so much more subtle, and when the viewer notices them, it's all that more satisfying for them.'

In truth, I've only noticed how strong those two passersby are now, as I look at the thumbnail of the pic.

Ah well. It's still a satisfying painting for me.

I painted this on an ultra chilly day in wintry Johannesburg, South Africa, on my Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc, using ArtRage 2.2. The pic is yours to play with under a Creative Commons 'Non-Commercial -- Attribution -- Share-Alike' license.