Creating my 2010 Holiday Card

Above: finished art for the 2010 Holiday card.

Since I was a kid, I've been drawing. Some people think that drawing comes easy. Like water coming out of the faucet, the drawings just flow out of the hand.

Some drawings do come easy, but other drawings do not. I don't know why.

For this Holiday card that I drew: drawing a house, people, some cats -- it sure sounded easy. But I fussed over the thing for a while. Below is a portion of the roughs.

The idea: the cats are inside and warm, and the people are outside, working in the cold. The problem was I always wanted more room than I had. The cards were not to exceed postcard size, this way they could be mailed like postcards, resulting in postage savings.




So, we'll go back in time before the color finished drawing at the very top. Here are some roughs from my sketchbook. The above illustration is OK, but the cats are too dinky.



A little better.


I drew some grid lines to help lay it out. There are still problems: hard to make out what people are doing, black woodstove inside dominating interior. Didn't bother drawing the cats in this one. Hmm.


A very rough thumbnail sketch and, well, everything is too small.



One of the problems is showing that snowblower. It just takes too much attention away from the cats, which should be the focal point.




Trying to squeeze it all in in a portrait-sized format. You cxan see just quick and sketchy the thumbnail drawing is.


So, there you have the last of the sketches. And that's not even all of the sketches I made. In the end, I realized that I could use color to help guide the eye.

Sometimes the drawings come easy, but this one sure didn't.