How Much? The making of a postcard

A few days back, Feline of Feline and Strange played the song, “How Much?” for a select bunch of supporters over the internet. She does a little video most every day to deal with the privations of lockdown. Anyway, “How Much?” is a great favorite. “Wolf in a Sheepskin” is based on it, too.

The song contains the line, “What is the formula to calculate the volume of the soul.” So I sent her this:

and explained that, “ Volume of the soul = the sum (from zero to n where n is the number of years lived) of good deeds minus bad deeds divided by number of years. All to the power 3 (because its a volume).” Also that I'd got a picture in my head of Death doing the math, so felt I had to work out the formula.

So, over this last weekend I decided to do a postcard based on that. “Why a postcard?” is probably another subject for a future post.

This was my first thought – scribbled in biro in a school exercise book.

You can see that Death is writing in a book with a quill pen and the formula is on a board behind him. The scribbled shape in the bottom right-hand corner is supposed to be an old-school adding machine. The kind with a handle on the side and a roll of paper that comes out the top.

Here are some more. In pencil in a sketchbook this time.

Below Death is a rough outline of an adding machine plus a hand holding a pen.

The scribbled writing next to it (believe it or not) is actually a note to myself telling me its the wrong hand. I drew my left hand using a mirror, which would be OK for a drawing, but in print the image gets flipped again, so it would go back to being the left.

Here are some more hands

...and the adding machine.

Though by this time I was beginning to realise that nobody would know what it was, especially on something so small as a postcard.

So, by the time I did the final sketch, I'd added a calculator that seems more... twentieth century.

I then traced this to the block, where the cutting process took over.

Well. That's the process of image development. Writing this, I realise there are other processes that deserve their own posts. But they're to be worked on in their own good time. So I'll end here with a photo of the first few hanging up to dry.