Christmas Gift

This one of a few Christmas gifts I did this year.  It was a last minute idea for my mom.  This is probably a sentiment shared by many, especially here in the cold, dark, bleak winters of the Midwest where the sun is down by 5 o'clock and it is 20 below zero outside...kinda hard to be motivated.

Pretty satisfied with the overall result.  The only things I would change are the size of the hands, and the perspective of that bench seat, as I was basically eyeballing it (lazy).  The other thing I noticed was, the silhouette of the bottle was disappearing into the background/bench.  I was able to adjust it a bit in the digital version, but the print ended up darker than expected, so...probably gonna need to go back and fix that at some point...should be simple enough to do.

Anyway...just thought I would share, as these are the projects I enjoy doing the most, and could actually see doing something like this as a collaboration with a company of sorts (basically packaging design or illustration).

So, another gift and another piece in the old portfolio!  Happy New Year, considering all that has happened, this next year (and possibly four) should be very interesting to say the least...excited to see what happens...and a bit scared, too.

Buckle up!

Christmas Sketch Dump

Merry Christmas everyone...and welcome to my blog post.  These are some sketches that I did for family and friends between freelance jobs.  I really like doing these sorts of things the most, as they are the most personal to me.  As an artist, it is my duty as well as my pleasure to be drawing as much as I can, so it is always best when I can draw things that I care about.  I hope to draw all my friends at some point, so if I didn't make it to you in time for Christmas, perhaps in the near future I will.  I have been drawing every day for about 3-4 hours each night (sometimes more).  Some nights yield more productive sketches, while others offer mindless, throwaway doodles.  It's all good.

I would like to say something about the last to images.  These are my aunt, uncle, and cousins.  The first sketch was done from random photos.  I was fairly happy with the drawing, but it felt a bit generic to me.  A couple days later, I came across their Christmas card and realized that I needed to redo the drawing.  It is sometimes hard as an artist to redo things...you want to move on to other things, people, etc.  I had to sacrifice a bit to redo this, but I am really glad that I did.  I am still not completely satisfied with how my aunt and uncle turned out, but I think it looks much closer/better overall, and it might be my favorite piece of this Christmas collection.

Anyway...cheers to all, have a happy holiday season, and enjoy!