The drawing below is the last pencil stage of the second part of the trilogy The Eight of Hearts. I drew it by hand with pencils and micromine. To learn more about the sketching and drawing of this project, visit my previous post
I coloured the whole illustration in Photoshop. Here, some details of the process:
Below, there's an introduction to The Eight of Hearts written by Martin Halfhide:
Introduction to The Eight of Hearts
"My father, Bill, had a passionate love of the North Coast of Cornwall in South West England and decades ago we as a family spent many glorious summers in what was, and still is a beautiful part of the world.
Another one of his passions was walking, he would set us all down on the beach and with binoculars stuffed in his pocket and promising not to be long he would head off into the undulating cliffs that rose and fell along the rugged coast.
While he was gone I would often wander off myself and spent many hours watching the mighty waves rise from the clear green waters before crashing against the jagged rocks in an explosion of white surf before receding back into the turbulent sea only to rise up again in a mountainous wave of smooth water intent only on destroying itself again on the stubborn rocks.
I would sit there with salty spray dusting my face picking up pebbles, some small some quite large, I always examined them closely before hurling them selfishly back into the water, but as each one left my hand it would cross my mind as to how many tens of millions of years had passed since this small piece of rock had fallen on the beach before being thrown back into the sea to meander down to the bottom probably never to be seen again.
During those teenage years I was heavily into collecting playing cards and had a collection that I added to whenever pocket money allowed, and as darkness fell and the thrashing sea was left to continue its relentless battle with the shore I would select my latest pack purchased locally and play solitaire.
They were games that I devised in my own mind, loosely based on the ones we all know but with personal twists that only I knew of which was always a mystery to my siblings.
As the years wore on I began to see some of the cards as characters, visualising them in my mind and thinking of them as ficticous beings with no face, identity or features but each one having a history that only I would remember for years on end.
The decades and time rolled relentlessly on and it was while on holiday with my own children often in the rural splendour of central France that I remembered my thoughts whilst sat on the beach in Cornwall throwing rocks into the sea and I could actually visualise them still laying in the sand on the seabed undisturbed after all those years with me being the only person that knew how they came to be there which led me to the idea of leaving a card in a seemingly undiscoverable place.
This I did, and in various locations across Europe, very well hidden, lies a card, and now thanks to the incredible talent of Alba Ceide the character of that card has now come to life.
My thoughts are and always have been quite dark and as the years roll by perhaps they get darker still and when one evening in Soho I relayed those feelings to Alba and asked her to bring the Eight of hearts to life I simply let her imagination and creativity run riot.
The first incarnation brings him to life, the second one shows him hurling his heart and his darkness amid rivers of fire into the ruined cities."
Another one of his passions was walking, he would set us all down on the beach and with binoculars stuffed in his pocket and promising not to be long he would head off into the undulating cliffs that rose and fell along the rugged coast.
While he was gone I would often wander off myself and spent many hours watching the mighty waves rise from the clear green waters before crashing against the jagged rocks in an explosion of white surf before receding back into the turbulent sea only to rise up again in a mountainous wave of smooth water intent only on destroying itself again on the stubborn rocks.
I would sit there with salty spray dusting my face picking up pebbles, some small some quite large, I always examined them closely before hurling them selfishly back into the water, but as each one left my hand it would cross my mind as to how many tens of millions of years had passed since this small piece of rock had fallen on the beach before being thrown back into the sea to meander down to the bottom probably never to be seen again.
During those teenage years I was heavily into collecting playing cards and had a collection that I added to whenever pocket money allowed, and as darkness fell and the thrashing sea was left to continue its relentless battle with the shore I would select my latest pack purchased locally and play solitaire.
They were games that I devised in my own mind, loosely based on the ones we all know but with personal twists that only I knew of which was always a mystery to my siblings.
As the years wore on I began to see some of the cards as characters, visualising them in my mind and thinking of them as ficticous beings with no face, identity or features but each one having a history that only I would remember for years on end.
The decades and time rolled relentlessly on and it was while on holiday with my own children often in the rural splendour of central France that I remembered my thoughts whilst sat on the beach in Cornwall throwing rocks into the sea and I could actually visualise them still laying in the sand on the seabed undisturbed after all those years with me being the only person that knew how they came to be there which led me to the idea of leaving a card in a seemingly undiscoverable place.
This I did, and in various locations across Europe, very well hidden, lies a card, and now thanks to the incredible talent of Alba Ceide the character of that card has now come to life.
My thoughts are and always have been quite dark and as the years roll by perhaps they get darker still and when one evening in Soho I relayed those feelings to Alba and asked her to bring the Eight of hearts to life I simply let her imagination and creativity run riot.
The first incarnation brings him to life, the second one shows him hurling his heart and his darkness amid rivers of fire into the ruined cities."
Text written by Martin Halfhide
Above, the final artwork. It was printed on Fine Art paper and mounted on aluminium at Bayeux lab in London, images below:
