Creating Christmas Cards

It all starts with sketching.

After drawing all sorts of ideas you choose what you like and re-draw it more neatly. I'm in love with the clean lines of vector graphics so usually after scanning the marker drawing I first tidy it up in Photoshop and after that work with it in Illustrator. Sometimes I spend hours adjusting the lines.

When I'm happy with the outlined character I create a PDF file out of it and take it back to Photoshop. That is when the fun part starts: coloring. And when I say coloring I don't mean only colors but textures and patterns too.

This is what I came up today. But even though I was happy with my christmas elf I felt like something - a story - is missing. So I came up with the last detail. Can you spot what it is?

I'm gonna do couple more Christmas card illustrations and sell them at our University's Christmas sale that is coming in the 10th of December. I do also have the design available online in Zazzle. Merry it's-less-than-two-months-to Christmas!