George! No! Bad George!

I would have made more cakes & cupcakes but I ran
out of time. By coincidence, someone brought in
cupcakes while I was working.Wish: fulfilled.

This illustration ran on Wednesday with a story about cakes for Presidents' Day, featuring recipes for cake by Martha W. and Mary Todd L. There's more in the story than that, but I don't quite know how to describe it. It was written by one of my pals, Jackie Burrell. Here's a link to it; it's interesting even if you're not a foodie! (Act quickly, links to the newspaper website dry up pretty quickly. Not my idea.)

The illustration printed pretty nicely! But, a confession. This was drawn entirely in photoshop, and on one of the layers I had added a subtle shadow to enhance the form of the area at the corner of George's mouth, so that it was more clear he had eaten one of those cherries. Also, there was a dab of pink frosting on his lips.

During the final merging of layers I seem to have deleted that stuff and not noticed. Dang! I was close! So close to my perfect illustration. Denied again. Ha!

Here's how it appeared in print, as assembled by another pal, page designer Jennifer Schaefer. I've always been comfortable with the general tone and temperament of the Features department and this was one more in a long run of fun assignments.

Geez, looking at that pizza is really getting to me. Best part of the page, I'm thinking!

Looking ahead:
More to come in a couple of days. I found another batch of old doodles, and I might show a couple of the less embarrassing ones. I found some old journals and sketchbooks and paintings that I haven't seen in years; some of those may appear, too. Again, all according to my courage.

I'm going to try to write more posts covering the process of creating these illustrations. That's more work, but it is more fulfilling. And there seems to be more interest in that than a picture and my prattling on about it.

This illo would have been a good one for that. Maybe I'll re-visit this one. Hmmm.

I don't know, I might use up all the pastel pink, yellow and blue on the internet if I post this one again.

The End