It's been a while, but I returned from my break to say 'welcome back' once again!

I'm well-rested, art-wise, and start the month with clear thoughts and new ideas. I don't know how soon I actually will participate in contests again, but bear with me here. I'll come back to it eventually. Before then, I've got some plans. Especially, I work on a little trio of illustrations - you might call it a triptychon even - depicting divine characters based on a set of stories from another hobby author. The first of three goddesses is already done, the second one is work in progress. You'll get to see them in the next few chapters, I suppose. For these pictures, I re-opened a long-time neglected sketchbook of mine, and its paper would do well with coloured pencils, for a change, I think ...

However, today Im not going to leave you without art. It's a postcard and kind of a sequel to may's monthly postcard piece - hence the name. Accordingly it's another semi-realistically styled portrait.

I confess, it's oddly missing the, y'know, smile this time. As I sketched the piece, it was designed as a shy smirk, but got lost somewhere in the colouring process. I fell into that much more serene feeling that I also get from many Renaissance portraits and just did let it happen.
For the background, it's just improvised, not a meaningful aura. I tried colours first, but they crossed that calm serenity. When I tried to apply darker wax colours over it, they completely showed the paper texture and wouldn't let themselves being corrected ... So, I just improvised some more, so that messy background's what you get if you don't plan ahead. Oh well.
The rest of the piece is done in black and light sepia outlines, coloured in with a faint base of water colours, then worked up thoroughly with alcohol markers and mostly coloured pencils. I had to really sharpen those to get a decent result on that paper, especially the freckles. Really, I don't come to love this textured paper, alas, I'll use it up, especially for the monthly postcards (as to not cutting up perfectly fine art supplies to get the format otherwise, too).

If you wonder, the version in the header is a filtered one I retrieved while playing with some tools in my photography program. Nothing spectacular, just another look at it, if you will.
So ... I'm glad to be back!