Monday, March 4, 2013

Carnevale a Venezia

"Carnevale a Venezia" is my entry for the Enchanted Doll Birthday Contest 2013 (by the way, I have seen some entries from the forum people and they look absolutely gorgeous...so the competition is hard!).

I chose Venice as my ideal destination, because I am enamored with its elegance, ancient history, and innate fragility. It's a dream of gold and lace floating on the water always on the brink of disappearing under the waves. I have traveled a bit and seen lovely places, more exotic and adventurous than Venice, but my heart is in my country and because I live far away I the desire to go back burns particularly strong. Most of all I wish to visit with my little Bella and share with her the pleasure of visiting this jewel of a city.
As for the Carnevale, the costumes and masks are so inventive, opulent, and mysterious that I've always been fashinated and maybe also a bit intimidated by them. So, to me it would be great to return to Venice during the Carnevale.

I wanted to really stick with the traditional postcard design and feel, yet personalize it. 
One issue was that postcards are rather small (4x6, as per the rules of the contest) and this poses a challenge to me, because I like to draw tons of little details, but on such a small canvas this was going to be impossible. My solution was to draw on a regular 9x12 sheet, take a picture of it, send it to Shutterfly or some other printing service and turn it into a pretty neat postcard.

The plan was pretty straight forward. The implementation... not so much. 

Here is the pencil sketch, which I started mid January...I had a lot of fun drawing San Marco's Cathedral.
 
 ...but it was a lot of work inking it!

Here I am at the end of January with still most of the difficult parts still to tackle.

In order to give the impression of distance, instead of using my usual black Copic Multiliner (0.03), I switched to one of the newer Multiliners in grey (with a 0.05) to ink the church. I think it worked well, especially when I added the colors.
Coloring was quick and fun...so here is the final drawing:
At this point (around Valentine's Day), I took a nice picture of the drawing and tried to send it to print...too bad I did not account for the fact that it takes at least a week for the actual printing job to be completed and then a couple of days to get it back home for the finishing touches. The contest deadline was February 28th! Bottom line, with this course of action, I would never have made the deadline...How could I have neglected these details!!!
In the end, I sent the picture to be printed at the local Walgreen's...where they actually butchered the color depth, in my opinion, but I had no time to be picky, so I settled for it.
I then attached the drawing to a same size piece of watercolor paper, and decorated the back of the card to make it look like an actual Italian postcard.
 

This is actually a reproduction of an actual stamp issued in 1973 that in turn used a painting by the Venetian painter Vittore Carpaccio (1465 – 1525/1526)...see below:




I am pretty happy with how it turned out.

Well, I got it out just on time! For a while it was stuck at the post office in Vancouver (oh nooo!), but the ED team picked it up a few days ago and Marina also gave an extension to the contest deadline (March 3) so all is well.


9 comments:

  1. oooh my, Maura, i'm in LOVE with your postcard, it is so beautiful!
    Venice is a dream for me, i have never been but i just know that i have to see this city some time soon, Calle feels the same way!
    what a perfect choice and then amazingly beautiful execution, it makes me want to go right now! ♥
    Annina

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    1. Dear Annina, thank you! Glad you like it!
      We went in the nineties. It was late August and we had just spent 10 stressful days in Rome (hot, deserted, weird "summer" hours for all museums and churches, and we also got robbed! :(). Venice was like a balm on our wounds! So relaxed and beautiful, smaller and romantic. I have very happy memories of that time. ^^
      I wish you'll have a chance to go see it soon and enjoy it as much as we did. :)

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  2. Mauraaa ma è tua la cartolina??? fatta da te??? ma sei bravissimaaa ...è la mia favorita :-) pensavo fosse una cartolina comprata e il dubbio l'ha avuto anche Marina a quanto pare....sono veramente senza parole!!!! Poi Venezia...una della città piu' belle al mondo (so che sono di parte...pero' dai...è unica bisogna ammetterlo!!!! ogni anno dico che vado al carnevale..e puntualmente poi succede qualcosa per cui devo rimandare.....si sa...quando hai una cosa fuori dalla porta di casa è sempre cosi'...gli altri vengono dall'altra parte del mondo per vederlo e io che ce l'ho a un'ora di strada......
    Spero che tu venga presto in Italia cosi' ci andiamo insieme...magari con Marina??? Tengo le dita incrociate per te per il contest...anche quelle dei piedi. Un bacio e ancora bravissima!!!! xxx Stefy

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    1. Grazie Stefy! Ma quanto mi fa piacere il tuo commento! Avevo pensato di fare una cartolina tutta a mano, ma temevo di non dare il meglio di me (= un milione di dettagli :D) in uno spazio ristretto...cosi' ho dovuto ricorrere a questa soluzione.

      Avevo in mente altri due posti, tra cui Petra, ma poi, da buona Italiana, ho preferito giocare in casa! E' vero che Venezia e' unica. Come sono stata felice quando l'ho visitata! Non ci sono parole per descriverlo. Sei fortunata a vivere cosi' vicina!

      Si, si, quando verremo in Veneto (tra l'altro abbiamo un paio di cari amici che vivono qui a Chicago ma sono di Padova), ti faccio sapere ed organizziamo! Il prossimo viaggio in Italia sara' dedicato esclusivamente a Genova: ci sono troppi amici e parenti che devono conoscere la bimba e che non ci vedono da quasi due anni!

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  3. Ma questo è un vero capolavoro!!è uno dei tuoi disegni più riusciti!E poi ho riconosciuto i piccoli personaggi che rincorrono i piccioni..e immagino chi possano essere quei personaggi misteriosi mascherati fotografati da quella splendida fotografa...
    Brava!ti sei superata!sei proprio un artista!in bocca al lupo x la gara..x noi sei la migliore!
    Anna

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    1. Grazie mille carissima! Hai indovinato e anche se non ho vinto il concorso, il vostro sostegno mi da' grande soddisfazione!
      A presto e bacini a tutti!

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  4. Finalmente,grazie a Anna sono arrivata!
    Brava, sei la migliore!
    BM

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    1. Ciao BM! Eccoti qui! Ti sei "abbonata"? Grazie mille del pensiero...poi ti racconto. Un abbraccio forte forte.

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