Obstacles? What's that?

As promised, it’s finally time to talk about overcoming obstacles.

It doesn’t seem that way, but we’ve had quite a few ‘now what?’ moments over the course of this project.

After editing the first draft, with the tone and style of the story mostly sorted (yay!), it was time to focus on the illustrations.

The keyword here is 'focus', because the truth is that Eirini was already working on an illustration by that time, since I was taking forever with the story, but still, you get the idea. :-) 

Naturally, because we don't like doing things the conventional way, Eirini had picked a scene from the middle of myth to start working on, but that's us for you! :-p

All jokes aside, that scene is one of the most powerful and emotional scenes in the entire myth; Psyche is standing alone at the edge of a rock, after having said goodbye to everyone she knew, waiting for a mysterious husband to come and claim her.

Eirini had a very clear idea about the composition of this scene from the very beginning, but we were both nervous about it, because, let’s face it, that illustration was going to define the style of the entire book. Whatever came next, it would have to be similar in style.

We spent hours upon hours talking about it, and Eirini spent even more time trying to make it perfect (and she was frustrated on more than one occasions when various things didn't work out the way she’d planned them to); so, when it was finally finished, it looked great; a perfect depiction of what was going on in that scene. 

Dark and moody and exactly how it was supposed to be, right?

version #1...

Well, no.

When we tried the picture next to the text, something was off.

What did we do then?

Well, Eirini redrew the whole thing, keeping the basics of the composition, but choosing a completely different set of colours and setting a completely different mood.

... and version #2 (not entirely finished, because we wouldn't want to give everything away :-p )

Did it work?

We certainly hope so! :-)