Merry Christmas

10/25/04 - I actually drew this about a year ago. I drew it, I scanned it on my trusty old scanner, and I began colouring it. But for one reason or another I never finished it. It sat there, with a few dabs of colour here and there, collecting dust on my hard drive.

Then a few nights ago, sitting home sick rather than being at work as I usually would have been, I decided to redraw the picture. I'd somehow gotten it into my head that I hadn't finished it because I was unhappy with the drawing. So I combed through my hard drive and dug up the old, unfinished picture...and liked it! This wasn't bad at all, I thought. It's a mystery as to the real reason I never finished it.

Until now. Perhaps it's for the best, because back then I didn't have nearly half the tricks I put to use in the final product. I only got this Artz II Wacom tablet a couple of weeks ago when visiting some old art school friends. The grass colouring and the entire background owe their existance to this tablet. The use of lighting effects is also a fairly recent developement, something I started using only this year while working on my webcomic.

This is the first non-comic piece that I've put my new Wacom to work on. I'm not quite happy with the clouds or the foreground trees, but I imagine these things will become easier with experience.

*edit* - Turns out that the pencil work is two years old, from when I was still working at my previous job.