Cards of Christmas Past: 2010: 19th Century Carolers in New Castle


 Cards of Christmas Past

2010

19th Century Carolers in New Castle


Our 2010 card shows the advantage of computer editing and printing to produce a card with more detail and color than our earlier card crafting approaches.  In the fall, at Oak Knoll Books on the top floor of the New Castle Opera House, I noticed the view of the old New Castle Courthouse, and it suggested the theme for this card.

I wanted to have a high angle view.  I made this very preliminary sketch...


I couldn't fly over the Courthouse, so I took photographs from ground level to work out the building's proportions.  Then I built a maquette, a little model, and photographed it from several viewpoints with a variety of lighting arrangements.



I chose this view for the card...


...made a very pale print of the cleaned up photo, carefully preserving the shadows.   Then I constructed the drawing over it...



And began adding color in Photoshop...

 
I drew the carolers, wagon, trees, the other buildings, and a few small details individually, scanned the drawings, then colored, scaled, and placed them as layers in Photoshop.  I experimented with several placements for the wagon and the carolers.

Here again is the finished view...



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