It was a grey day.

It was always a grey day.

The dark grey mills belched out their dark grey smoke into the dark grey sky as thousands of children scampered along cobbled streets to be greeted by the dark grey foremen of the dark grey mills.

But something felt different this morning.

There was the faint burble of music and a strange red tint to the dark grey clouds.

Joseph stopped on his way to the dark grey clog factory where he spent most of his dark grey days. He could see shafts of red light spilling through the archways in the dark grey viaduct. And from the other side of the dark grey terraces he could hear music. It wasn't beautiful, but he so rarely heard music that it seemed to him to be so very beautiful.

Other children stopped.

A thousand children stopped.

A thousand children breathing light grey mist into the dark grey air.

And then it appeared between the dark grey arches.

A burbling, trundling, tumbling circus of scarlet and ivory shrouded in a creeping, crawling, inquisitive mist.

As it edged towards him along the dark grey cobbles, Joseph realised that he had never seen anything like it. He had never seen anything so colourful. He had never seen anything so red. So very very red.

In all of his dark grey life, Joseph had never seen anything so Spectacular!

----

I've made a couple of tweaks but time is short because my 7 month old daughter Daisy has banged her head and been very sick all over her mummy!

So we're off to the hospital...

i'll talk about the red later...it's a stylistic thing... i like it when it's printed! :)

SO is this it...?

I'm gonna take it home (i'm still at the office) and have another look and make any teeny weeny tweaks... and then...

I'll submit it...

(Fingers crossed for the ftp!)

some bits and bobs to do...

not gonna tell you what in case i don't get them all done... teehee!

But i can see the light at the end of the tunnel. just gotta keep my fingers crossed that the ftp'ing goes smoothly because i'm gonna be a last minute boy!!

I've been sorting out Mr.Mandrill... but now it's time for 'proper' work.

Why does everything take longer than you think?

:)

Didn't get it finished last night... had some baby distractions and got too tired and it became a struggle. It's no fun when it's a struggle! And this is for fun!

But there's plenty of time today to add the finishing details and do a bit of tweaking...

Been doing some fiddling and painting so i thought i'd post a screengrab of the clowns close up...

You may also be able to spot my layer indulgence. I've been trying to limit my layers but all the detail is making my head hurt and i've gone a bit layer crazy.

And the good news is that i think it's all gonna be done on time! Hoooray!!

If i can get the ftp sorted... sigh...

Lunchtime progress... adding detail to the circus procession... and i worked up the bricks in the viaduct.

I wanted to get the less interesting stuff out of the way so i can detail up the front characters tonight.

So...

i didn't get it finished over the weekend... So i won't have the 24 hours to leave it alone and review it. But i'll still get it done. And i've had quite a bit of fun playing with the colour... even if there's not a lot but red!!

Started properly on the circus folk!

I'm hoping to get all the circus finished today, so that tomorrow can be a 'tweaking' day. Unfortunately, i need to go off and order some carpets this afternoon and treat my ladies to a pub lunch, so won't be able to make progress until this evening... bah!

I'll post another WiP this evening...

Started on the clowns...

The clowns are gonna be more colourful than the monotone city folk, but i'm going to try and keep the colours fairly subdued and take account of the red smoke and light.

Lots to do yet... but at least it feels achievable!