Framed Romances and Iced Passion Tea

So, in the journey of making postcards and exploring the world of Etsy and hand made goods, I somehow discovered a new style that I didn't know I had in me. And I love it!

I call them Romance Frames. In general, I LOVE capturing sexual tension, tender moments, love and passion through art. But I also like gothic and celtic design, stained glass, the artist Mucha and etc. And come to find out, when I clash these two together in my own style, it comes out like this!

                                               

And I'm proud to say the amazing owner of these 4 postcards above is my good friend from high school, Shannon! After she bought the first 3, I made the last one for her for free, and modeled it after her and her husband. :] I just couldn't resist.

This is the one that I'm going to illustrate in this post! I will mostly focus on the transition from sketch to concept, and how I make the borders on these bad boys in a vague sense. That is, with as many steps as I can with the pictures that I took, hehe. Which leads me to say that I must warn you now, there is no information on anything beyond inking, like coloring, (so sorry about that), but everything up until pen filled details is there! :D Enjoy!

Step 1: Make A Super Skeleton Sketch

This part is the most adventurous, zen and hardest part. Half of me just sketches the feeling that I see, while the other half is greatly focused on anatomy, actual length, proportions, etc. But! This is also good, as most of you know, for laying out the basics of your drawing. Because if I decided to change the size or position, I could easily erase it all without too many hard lines. With too many details up front, it will cause problems in that if I want to change anything, I'll have left over lines imprinted (bad habit of pressing hard) and having to recapture that feeling again. 

Step 2: Detail by Area

Now, once the whole skeleton and shape is roughly formed, I move in to these shapes even further and fill in more details. For example, the head area. Notice how I didn't do anything with the hair or neck or more, but just facial features and things involved with the head, like her hand and shoulders. 

A little zoomed in pic so you can see the details. :]

Step 3: More details! 

So now that I've got the most expressive points of main focus refined and out of the way, I can focus on the things around it! It's almost like a spiral in how I work, I start in the main point, and go around it; start with eyes, then lips, hair, clothes, wrinkles, more refined body lines, etc. 

Step 4: Work on Border Details!

Since bordering is a main part of this art style, it takes a couple of extra steps to make sure this is done correctly. For this design, there are floral details in the corners, so once those are drawn, I can line the border.

Step 5: Inking the general border

As shown in the picture from the previous step above, filling in the general border lines are very important. This way, I know which parts of the main image lie outside or inside of it, and can work on the floral details above the black lines.

 Like this! I'll take a smaller sharpie and work around the penciled details of the flowers (so I don't wash it all out with the big bold sharpie) so that I can detail even more freely. 

 And Ta-daa! The border is (roughly) complete. :] 

Step 6: Inking! 

So now that everything is filled in, I can make it permanent. Again, with the spiral technique, I'll started at the main focal point and moved out. Eyes, lips, hair, etc. (I also added some facial hair to ink because I noticed her hubby had one ;D )

Then I'll ink the flowers and make sure each detail is sharp and on point.             Before and...

After! :D

Now for the bottom right flower...

Steps 7,8,9: Erasing and coloring then finished!

So since this is an incomplete post, as I said before, I sadly don't have any pictures or information for how I colored the background and flowers, but will focus on that in the next Romance Frame postcard I make. :]

Ta-da! It's magically cleaned up and colored and now resides with the other three postcards in my wonderful friend's humble home. :] (photo credit to Shannon, from when she got it in the mail! :D)

You can also check out some more postcards that I've recently made at my etsy shop, www.etsy.com/shop/tropicalbasenji as usual! 

Thank you all so much for reading and hope you enjoyed this post!