Drawings, Step-By-Step, Typography

The Cold Never Bothered Me

The Cold Never Bothered MEOriginal poster artwork.

Winter seems to be in it for the long-haul. I’m in the last leg middle of my second winter after my move from Los Angeles and it doesn’t seem like the cold will be letting up any time soon. Fortunately the last few days have been warm sunny.

I hear this winter has broken all sorts of records: Snow (it would seem) every other day. Several days with -26 degree wind-chills (today is a balmy -13 degree with the wind-chill). Snowvember! The list goes on and on. Good thing the “cold never bothered me anyway” or so I tell myself.

This wintry piece was inspired by the lyrics from ever-popular Let it Go song from Disney’s Frozen. I created it using several programs and started off with a sketch on paper. I’ve included some of the steps below:

The Cold Never...sketchThe original sketch with pen and paper.

Once the sketch was finalized, I took it into the computer where I used several programs to get the lettering “just right”. Manga Studio by Smith Micro is a fantastic program for sketching or inking AND it can work in vector and pixels. The program seems to be under-appreciated and under-used in the art community. My artistic best buddy uses the program all the time and puts out amazing work. It’s a GREAT program and version 5 is a huge leap from version 4.  I used Manga Studio for most of the original hand lettering and sketching.

The Cold Never...WIPLettering almost finalized and color swatches are in the corner.

I then took the file into Adobe Illustrator to clean up the letters and curves. I wanted to leave some of the hand-lettered feel, so not every curve and flourish is 100% perfect. Once the lettering was finished, I took the file into Photoshop where I added the colors and final touches. Here is the finished piece again:

The Cold Never Bothered MELook for prints in my Etsy Shop soon.

What do you think?

Advertisement
Uncategorized

If Only In My Dreams

Michigan Postcard Collection

We’ve been listening to Christmas songs at work for about a month now. I think I have heard every possible variation of every classical Christmas song ever produced for radio. One that has been sticking in my head lately is “I’ll be Home for Christmas” by Bing Crosby, perhaps because this is the first Christmas that I WON’T be going “home” to Michigan. I was so fortunate to be able to go home three times this past year but, unfortunately, I do not have any additional paid-time-off to use.

While I will not be traveling to Michigan this holiday season, I will certainly be thinking of the Great Lakes State. I put together a collection of my Michigan postcards and hung it up today. “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams!”