Greetings From Your Sunny Daydreams on Illustration Friday


Yay! It's Illustration Friday and the Sun is Shining...

     It seems like an excellent day to be at the Beach.  I know I have been dreaming about beach time since winter melted.  There's just something about the sound of the waves lapping up against the shore,
the feel of that warm yet slightly cool ocean breeze, and the sweet salty smell of the mist...



     It's the stuff that the best Desktop wallpaper is made of. ;0)

     I wanted you all to fantasize about being at the beach because that is exactly what I have done with this
week's illustration.  I have created a fantasy.

     This week's topic is VINTAGE and at first I was going to take a pass on that topic and not participate this week, but since the beach was on my mind, I wanted to do something "beachy" and "Summery" this
week.  SO I decided to participate but didn't really know what I wanted to draw.  I will have to say that it
came to me while I was sitting at work and was a culmination of many different things that were
happening recently and also not recently.


     So I have to admit something that I do sometimes but don't tell others that I do as I think that I would be
heinously judged for it...... I binge watch TV shows on Netflix and I do so without shame... as long as no
one knows about it. lol.  I spent most of my last week binge watching the7th and Final Season of
Mad Men. (Amazing Season but SO SAD to see the show gone forever.)  If you ask me, Peggy should
have gone into business with Joan.  I think her marrying Sam was kind of a cop out.  If she was going to
marry anyone, it should have been Peter... but I digress... back to the illustration...


     But first: Another random thing from my head on the way back to the path of relevance.


     I have an odd hobby of collecting old photographs and postcards.  However, they must have personal notes written on the back of them.  It's weird, but I like doing collecting them.   It's like getting a glimpse into someone else's life that happened years and years and years ago.  I imagine in my head who this person is or who the person they are writing to is to them.  Its fun to imagine those things about these strangers.  It really is the only real Time Machine.


     So what does all these seemingly random things: Beach Calling my name, Feeling chipper about the
Summertime, Photo/Postcard/Personal Letters Collecting (a.k.a. Pseudo-Creepy Time Travel Stalking)
and Mad Men have to do with Illustration Friday?


     The answer is my idea that came out of it all: I decided to create a Vintage Postcard like the ones I
collect.

     Do you ever wonder why the postcards you see about locations and places in the world end up seeming
much more amazing than the actual thing sometimes?  Advertising.  I guess being immersed in the world
of Mad Men got on the brain with my illustration.  I always loved the Greetings from Sunny Wherever
postcards.  They depicted a moment in time that may or may not have happened.  It creates the moment
in your mind and gets you excited about Sunny Wherever.  SO I decided to create one of my own.


     I did some research into vintage beach postcards form the 50s and 60s (probably another Mad Men
influence, I suppose.)  I just seem to gravitate toward the visual aesthetic of those decades in American
History.  I love the the look of those Eras.  I also wanted to do a beach scene with animals again.
For whatever reason I chose a Stork, partly because I did a pirate illustration with Seagulls a year or so ago and wanted to choose a different bird.  I was thinking either stork or pelican because I was in the mood to draw a bird with a really long beak... Just seemed like it would be fun.  I also wanted my stork to be sunbathing in period swimwear.  The idea seemed funny and fun to me so I did it.

     Originally it was supposed to be only my Stork sun bather, but since JAWS just celebrated it's 41st year last week, I decided to include a shark in a floaty... because the idea of that is also amusing.  I figured if it was going to be an advertising fantasy, then it should really be one.


     There's not really too much else to say about this one.  I had a fun time this week drawing and illustrating
it.  I was able to practice more with the Wacom Tablet, so I enjoyed that continued Tech-Challenge.
I wish you all a fun rest of your Friday and weekend and hope this inspires a nice Daydream Trip to the
Beach.  Perhaps, we all can go to our Sunny Wherever's sometime very soon...


...but until then, friends,
Keep sketching, keep thinking, keep laughing and most important of all, 
keep making art.
Cheers,
LEWIS










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