Fun in the DDR!

Just completed this piece for Illustration 3. The assignment was to create an image in acrylics that contained a vehicle used in another time or place, and to apply some sort of tangible texture to our painting surface. The Trabant (sort of the Model T Ford of the DDR, only much more poorly made) was the first thing that came to mind, and it only seemed appropriate that das Sandmännchen (the Sandman, a very popular stop motion children's TV character who started in the DDR and is still popular all over Germany today) should be the one tending to it. For the texture, I mixed (you guessed it) sand with acrylic medium and brushed it everywhere other than in the area of the car, little elf and bucket. I fought the texture idea up to the point of actually trying it, and it turned out pretty cool.