Supermarket Battle part 6

It's been about a month since I last worked on the most recent supermarket print, but a lot has happened in that month.  Most of my time was occupied in getting and starting a new job, which involved a series of interviews and a ton of paperwork. (physicals, fingerprints, etc) Been to a few trainings (paid) and have a bunch more to come.  And had my first shift last weekend.  And while not part of this new job, I also earned money this week editing a newsletter and mowing the lawn, and tomorrow I go back to my building project, and then I'm busy all weekend.  But today I had nothing I had to do, no places I had to be.  So time to work on some art.

I had not done much to the block since the last posting about it, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about it, and had done a bit of research.  For example, last time I mentioned that I liked the two figures with battle axes in the upper left corner, but it didn't make much sense for store employees to have battle axes.  The supermarket where the inspiration occurred (and where I still regularly shop) has a large meat department window, allowing shoppers to see the butchers at work.  Perhaps they had something I could incorporate.  So I walked over there, carrying something to sketch on, hoping to see something I could use in my composition, only to find the store had parked a giant display case in front of that window, as part of their redecoration.  No more butchers.  I remembered from my opening day trip to the new Whole Foods that they also had a large window showing off their meat department in action, so on another day I walked over there.  The guy at work did not have a battle axe, or even a cleaver, but he was using a large meat cutting knife, a slightly curved blade, kind of like a sword.

Another thing I was researching was possibilities of the flags, symbols representing the two nations in my story.  Unfortunately, neither nation actually existed at the time of the Battle of Hastings.  And the traditional flag of England (red cross on white, their contribution to the Union Jack of Great Britain) was still a few hundred years away from existence.  However, I did find a flag linked to a specific city or region that had existed since the 6th century, featuring three short swords with curving blades.  See how all these things start coming together?

So today I redrew the two figures in the upper left corner.  Once again copied from the Tapestry, but larger this time, and I replaced their battle axes with the large curved butcher knives.  I'm going try to find a way to use the ancient English flag design in the space in the upper middle, and for now I relocated the flying beets over by the two fighting men.  Since I had put a few pineapples on the floor already (my nod to the decapitated heads regularly represented in the Tapestry), I added a display case of pineapples, based on sketches I did in the produce department where this started.  Still a long way to go, but I feel like I know how to get there.