Christmas Card Sets

Remember those Christmas cards I posted last year? I decided to have a go at selling them in these little sets. I'll have these at Thought Bubble this weekend, but I've also put them on my Etsy shop.

It took quite a while to put these all in cellophane like that so I hope I can sell at least a few!

2013 Highlights

It's that time again! I thought I'd put together another collection of the work I'm most proud of from the past year. In chronological order (I think):

The Mystery of the Roofrunner, this year's free Patience mini-comic. I thought the story was a little weaker than The Mystery of the Night Boy (2012), but I really tried my hardest on the environments, and I think they're miles better than my backgrounds had been before.

Children of the Night, the goth anthology I made with my bestie Sammy Borras this Summer. This was by far the biggest project I've ever cranked out, we did about 30 pages each! It was divided into shorter stories, but it really gave my a feel of how much work a long comic project would be. I'm also really pleased with my writing on all three of my comics!

A couple of pictures to represent Inktober as a whole. Last year I had no time to do Inktober, so I was really proud of myself for not only finishing it, but actually getting some good work out of it. Also I learned to do ink wash.

Finally, right at the end of the year, the twelve Christmas cards I made for my friends and family this year. I had the idea for these last year, but had no time to get them done for Christmas. I'm so pleased to have managed it this year.

I confess, it was... much harder to find things I was proud of this year. (Only Children of the Night leapt to mind.) Mostly because I didn't finish most of the things I'd planned to do by 2014. I had a portfolio review in... February? and got some excellent advice, but I did the same thing I did last year and got caught up in a lot of smaller projects and didn't manage implement any of that advice. I feel very foolish for allowing that to happen even when I'd identified it as a problem at the end of last year.

Obviously I fall into this trap very easily when I don't have some sort of structure in place, so this time I've made a to-do list for the WHOLE OF 2014. Complete with month-by-month breakdowns of which projects need to be started when. If I can't get the stuff on that list done by 2015 (barring major life problems) then it will only be because I lack discipline!

Bring on 2014! I can do better this year!

Christmas Cards - Set Two

These six are all plant-themed, and went to my friends. There's conifer, dogwood, hellebore, holly, mistletoe and rosehip. (I know rosehip is more of an Autumn thing, but I've seen it used in wreaths so I thought I could get away with it.)

I can't decide if dogwood or hellebore is my favourite from this set.

Christmas Cards - Set One

Now that it's safely after Christmas, I can show off the cards I made this year! I did twelve angels themed around different Christmas motifs, these six went to my family.

These are baubles, bells, candles, ice, nuts and oranges, and the Star of Bethlehem. I think ice is my favourite from this set.

A Christmas card!

As I've been so quiet this month I thought you'd like to see something. This is a Christmas card I designed for my Mum to use this year. I doodle angels all the time (especially in church) so I'm most proud of the star in the middle. Mum wanted one that incorporated the Star of David and a seven-point star, and I hardly specialised in geometric design so I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.

I've been soooo busy lately, what with Thought Bubble, making What's the Time, Mrs Woolf?, doing commissions, Sketchavember, applying for a million proper jobs and having horrible colds, so I haven't had much to put online.  Some of the commissions are almost done though, so hopefully I can show you what I've been doing all this time! Rest assured that at the end of this month I can at least show you my Sketchavember pictures, so you can all get acquainted with 30 of my own characters and laugh at how shaky my grasp of anatomy becomes when I draw late at night.

Seriously, it's pretty bad. It's like I forget that shoulders and hips are real body parts.