Supermarket Battle part 8

The last time I had been working on my block drawing in the Studio a slightly disturbing thought crossed my mind.  Having gone to great lengths to make use of historical facts and images in this piece, was my use of pineapples as a substitute for severed heads even plausible?  Sure, pineapples are available in Europe now, but were they in 1066?  Later when I got home I looked up the history of the fruit, and it turns out they came to Europe for the first time courtesy of Columbus.  So they had to go.   On one of my many supermarket visits I looked at what other items worked visually and made notes.

Watermelons seemed the best option.  Also a large oblong shape, easily recognizable.  It originated in Africa, so an old world fruit, and my research turned up that they had been imported into Europe by the Moors by the 10th century.  My summer job often includes long stretches with not much to do, and rather than just sitting around texting people, I'd rather bring art to work on.  This past weekend I did that, and used the time to replace the pineapples with watermelons.

After four consecutive days of working, I was off again today, and took advantage of the opportunity to get back into the Studio.  At the last critique a few people said they felt there was too much white space in the drawing, especially in the lower half.  In the image above, it's all white space that will be the floor.   Traditionally I show the edges of tiles in these prints, so those lines are part of the spaces.  Many of the designs ended up including patterns of dark (black) tiles, sections of value that can help balance the composition.  I had all the original blocks for this series there in the Studio, so I pulled them out to see the kinds of patterns I had used for the floors in the past, and added those to the new design.  Added some random values to the triangular pennants hanging across the store, and tilted the head of the man at the far left back, a reaction to the beets (the comet) about to hit him in the face.  The results are below.

I need to clean up the perspective a bit, and add some details here and there, but I think this one is mostly done.  I'll look at it again in a few days and see if anything stands out as needing change, but right now I think I am just about done.