Holiday Stamp

In between work, art classes, holiday shopping, and testing for my 2nd degree red belt in Tae Kwondo, I've had little free time. What time I've had, has been occupied with a new type of art project for me: carving (of a sorts)!

We decided to personalize our holiday gifts this year with a hand made stamp. We wrapped all our gifts in stamped butcher-block paper and even made a few cards as well. I originally wanted to create an image-based illustration, but ran out of time and settled for typography that reads Happy Holidays both right-side up, and upside-down.

Revised recipe

Here is the less-spicy version of the pumpkin cookie recipe, as promised! I also tweaked the sugar levels slightly since it IS a cookie and the holidays should be as sweet as can be.

Merry Christmas!

My recipe has been posted

My recipe has been posted on They Draw and Cook! Yay! It's been such fun watching all the different recipes appear on the site every day. It's like a very unique advent-day calendar: what goodies will opening the door each day reveal. I can't wait to see who the winners are.

What a great Christmas Eve present to me! I had a blast working on the drawing and testing cookie recipes. Below are some photos I took while I was creating the piece. They're not the greatest, since they were only taken with iPhones, but it's always fun to see the process.

The first of three versions of the mouse putting a cookie in the oven. I decided I wanted him leaning over more.

Take 2, but overlapping the center mouse more then I liked.

Final Line drawing

I started by laying in the background elements, then went straight to the foreground, since i'm still hesitant with the dark colors

Then, I started laying in the color on the main pumpkin and the snow in the middle-ground.

And more color...I was trying to mimic a white pumpkin with orange patterns from my reference photos, but by the time I finished tweaking colors to accurately highlight the focal point, this effect got very subdued

Working on the focal point, even though the background wasn't quite finished. The pear-shaped gourd has the door and window in a different position then the final drawing, which I didn't correct until the end. It had created a horrible tangent in the drawing with the pumpkin in the foreground. The carolers were also added to give more life to the scene.

Mostly final color.

The concept for my primary pumpkin.

The reference photo for the primary mouse, so I could get the lighting to look as accurate as possible, while stylized.