AV_anp.HolidayCheers

I think I'm finally over my cold or at least the worst of it. But here's this month's main poster for December. After last month's poster came out pretty nicely, I wanted to see how far I could push myself with markers. I even bought a set of relatively basic markers and I'm finding that they're working pretty decently. Really considering going all in and getting some Copics.

These are the lines to our anchor piece, an exaggerated Santa and an anxious Rudolf. The jKids call him something else--they even sing Rudolf's song, but the words aren't a translation, but a completely different thing altogether. So I had to explain to them who Rudolf is, even though they all know his (Japanese) song by heart.

These are some WIP shots of Santa. I used three different marker sets for this: one was really old and the pens were dying out, which made for a cool brush texture and softer colors (like the skin and beard); one was great for enhancing our main colors, like for the glove and the more vibrant red overlay color; and the third was the workhorse for the main colors, the pen set I recently picked up (you can see the golden brown and red pens from that set in the photos). I'm new to markers (and non-digital colors in general), so it's a fun exploratory time for me.

And this is what our dudes looked like after it's all said and/or done. The text and title were done with a fourth set of markers that are really thick and easily tear into the paper if you don't move quickly. The "Culture" part of the title was modeled after the Cheers logo, a show I never really watched but loathed for its theme song and logo, which were evocative to me of the most boring imaginings of what that show could possibly be about. We had to watch an episode or two in one of my comedy classes at Yale, and it wasn't bad. But still. That theme song and logo are gross.

And we close with some details of the supplementary stuff. We've got a close up of Rudolf and the month's activity, making paper snowflakes (I don't know if jKids know about paper snowflakes, but I'm pretty sure I've seen them amongst the various origami I see hanging around school). And finally a quick little illustration about mistletoe. Pretty sure they haven't heard of mistletoe before. Plus I just wanted to draw something that was line-centric.

All right, pretty good score of artistic experience points, I'd say. They say snow's a-comin' this weekend, so I'm pumped not to appear crazy for once for staying in on a weekend to draw.

Reuxben