Snow Bear

Here's my Christmas illustration for 2018! With my other two cats representing Halloween and Thanksgiving, Bear gets Christmas! He's perfect since he has long fur, even on the bottoms of his feet, and I always call him a snow cat  

With the holidays fast approaching, I wanted to compose something relatively simple, easy to execute, but still visually strong for my Christmas illustration.  I eventually settled on the idea of Bear sitting among a row of snowcats and worked out the details both before and during the actual creation of the piece. Perhaps the element I'm most proud of is the aurora sky.  That was a later idea and I didn't practice the technique I imagined before trying it out on the final image.  It turned out prettier than I hoped!

This is going to get printed on greeting cards and sent out to my closest friends and family, as I do with all my Christmas artwork (it's the whole reason for these illustrations, after all!) and Studio Mikarts members will also be getting reproductions of this piece (click the Patreon link below to get in on it).  I finished this in the last hours of November, and it feels really good to have finished my Christmas card art before December even began!  I'm often crazy busy creating art for cards and gifts at this time of year, but it's going nice and smooth this year~

Part 1: youtu.be/9EMwNAzbgaU

Part 2: youtu.be/lMcpQHyZMxE

Part 3: youtu.be/krbcWhkHfV4

Part 4: youtu.be/fRhH4l4TyoE

Ink, watercolor, gouache, and acrylic on cold press watercolor paper, 9 x 12 inches