Last project of 2010? maybe!

I can't remember last time I painted in bulk like this, but I'm sure I've never done more than 4 in this way, I'm ridiculously excited about this!

This past sunday I finally came up with a concept I liked which, as usual, had nothing to do with the original idea, soon enough I had 3 sketches that has been edited very little. So I have 3 designs that will be painted in n cards, and of course I want to make 3 extra ones for me to keep them, will I? depends on how tired I get of painting them.

Lately I'm realizing that I enjoy more and more the preparation process, a couple of years ago I'd let a lot of ideas undone just because I'd grind too much through the pre-work, now it's quite different, it's becoming not just a preparation for the final work but a preparation of my mind state too, getting me in the right mood for painting, does that sound too weird? have you gone through something like that too?

This time it's made me try an alternative to saving a crisp edge around the illustrations with tape, somehow the last tape I bought doesn't work well, it either doesn't stick well to the paper letting the water run beneath it or tear the paper off when I remove it, the other one I have is great for stretching but not for saving white paper 'cos when you remove it it leaves a lot of yellowish sticky gum *yuck!*, so this morning I decided to simply use masking fluid, then realized I 'd had to freehand the straight lines and with masking fluid once you put the brush to paper it's done for good or bad, unless you want to wait for it to dry and remove it all, so I've put myself to the task and found myself checking against the window light if the lines where straight.

What's happened is that the first time I've seen a sloppy one I've gone over it again trying to fix it, the result... let's say that it's like that moment when you know you must stop adding more colors to a wash but you just can't and end up overworking it at best, yep, I'd love to say "lesson learned" but it's not, I just couldn't let them alone. I hope that, after all the fiddling I've done, they end up looking good but I won't know until the pics are finished and the mask removed.

So, right now this is the first batch of 6 ready to be painted tomorrow and hopefully cut the paper for the next batch, remember this, I now predict that the first one of each batch will be the fresher, probably the second and third will be the best ones, and the last three the average ones, shouldn't it be like that painting in groups of 6? have I mentioned how excited I am about this? :D if they don't decide to go a different way I plan a back to basics in these ones.

BTW, do you have a favorite brand of masking tape? wondering if I can find around something inexpensive and that gets the work done, I thought I had the perfect one all these years and now it comes and fails horribly...