Process and Inspiration for Green Drop Cap

This week's drop cap assignment was to create a green drop cap (due on St. Patrick's Day).

I was originally thinking about illustrating a green little monster letter, but I realized that is overdone.

While I was shopping for supplies for experimenting on a new poster, I came across colored sand in The Learning Station. GREEN! CLICK! I had to buy it, even though I didn't have a clear idea for it yet.

I thought about drawing a letterform with a stencil and adhesive and sticking sand to it, I thought about creating a mountainous landscape with sand that when photographed from the right angle, would look like an F. 

   Then I googled sand, and letters and saw a montessouri teaching video of a woman drawing letters in sand and sounding them out. That sparked the idea of sign language for some reason in my head and I thought back to last year when I covered my sister's foot in glitter:

This gave me the idea to cover my hand in sand and photograph a sign language F.

This meant elmers glue needed to be bought and thinned with water, and then poured over my hand...

Then I covered it in sand, photographed it, and...voila!

I forgot to scrape the sand off of my fingernails, which I think would make it look better. So I will do that, reshoot next week, and photograph an entire alphabet.