backyard blues

Created for the Spinners--End 2nd Challenge. It was done by superimposing layers of scanned pencil drawings and then forkling about with them with ImageFolio and a mouse (I do own a tablet but I don't have the room to set it up). Lily and Severus are as close as I can get them to how JK Rowling herself draws them - which is why Sev's nose is hooked at the tip, not the bridge.

For those too young to remember, the things Lily is playing with are called clackers, a sort of cross between Newton's Cradle and a yoyo: they were a nationwide craze in the early 1970s, before being banned from schools for being too dangerous. You were supposed to stick your finger through the ring and then get the balls to perform an arc around your hand, striking each other at the bottom and top of the swing - but they were liable to batter the player's wrists instead.

Lily has found a safer way of working them - although the risk that the balls will shatter and flying lumps of acrylic will smack her in the face still exists. Possibly that's how Severus ended up with crooked teeth....

The strange plant growing out of the drainpipe is rosebay willow herb, imported from the US in the Victorian era and now growing all over Britain, and in some pretty extraordinary locations.

Now with improved perspective.