Party Time!

Hooray! At last I've finished the illustration job that has taken a large chunk of my time over the last six or seven months. Here's a sketch of my friend Jill's lovely birthday party that happened back in November to celebrate. In fact, I didn't sketch at the lunch - I planned to, taking paper and pens - but, I just can't manage talking, eating, drinking, laughing and sketching at the same time, so I took photographs, and Jill's friend Jan took photographs and I drew from those.
It no longer is a sketch then, you start fiddling with arranging and moving elements around instead of composing on the spot. Some faces came out bigger than others, and some seriously didn't look like anybody there, so I had to scan and cut and paste, eventually printing out the manipulated line drawing on sketchbook paper and putting watercolour onto that. I'm aware that it resembles da Vinci's Last Supper arrangement of figures, especially since I had to stick my rather bemused face in, for the record, at the opposite end from where I was sitting. I suspect this is the only way you can fit so many people (13!) on one landscape format - so it was entirely unintentional and not meant to be sacrilegious, so don't start trying to work out who's who! But it was a GREAT party, so much fun - I put trees and windows in because soon after we'd sat down under the trees in the sunshine, clouds gathered and rain started bucketing down - we were herded under the roof and the tarpaulin sides were let down and the celebrations continued very happily.

Have I figured out how to post a larger size picture on here? I'll find out when I publish this! I hope it doesn't take too long to load. Let me know if it does and I'll make it the usual size.