My family has two birthdays coming up, for my brother and sister respectively. Well, technically, my brother's birthday was last month, but he's away from home and won't return until mid-August, so we'll be celebrating both in the coming weeks. For the first time ever, I decided to make my own birthday cards. It adds a personal touch and I save a few bucks ... though, assuming I got paid minimum wage, this first card would have cost over $30.
I'll just add here that making art for someone else, even just a carefree birthday card, is rather stressful. I became far more critical of my work, something I didn't think possible, but there it is. You always want to make it perfect, but when someone else's eyes will be seeing it, you want to make it extra perfect. Though I only made one birthday card, essentially two images this week, I put in many hours of work. Here we go:
This is the front cover (the card is folded in landscape style, so it's longer horizontally than vertically). For those who don't know, this is the Pokemon Krabby. I think I did an excellent job with this: good proportions, nice shading, looks like the real thing. Note that my scanner wasn't being my friend today, and it refused to scan the top part of this image, which should read "Don't Be." In other words, the front of the card says "Don't Be [picture of Krabby]" Why don't be crabby? Because ->
Don't be crabby, it's your birthday! So, basically, you open the folded card up, which reveals a much happier crab, complete with party hat, party balloon and a present, as well as a banner. I won't lie, drawing this part really sucked. Krabby doesn't have as nice proportions, and trying to turn the claw sideways to hold the present almost made me scream. Not to mention the completely 2-d present looks completely out of whack with the rest of the image. But hey, at least the balloon looks good! I think it's the best touch.
I believe this is my first sample of handwriting uploaded here. I have excellent handwriting, but it isn't very artistic: it's small, compact and straight. I'm told it looks like a computer font. I write to take up the least amount of space possible, so I can cram more words onto a page. This is an admirable trait but less good for a birthday card. It takes an incredible act of will to write bigger, and still, the first time I wrote 'birthday' it covered maybe 1/3 of the banner. I tried it three more times ... then I practiced writing it on a separate piece of paper about six or seven times, and then I finally did it. Even here, I had to add the exclamation mark to make it even, but it worked.
Here's the complete card in one image:
Of course, I've added my own little message in the black space under the banner, but the Internet doesn't need to see that. This is my art blog. You're here for my art, not my sappy birthday banter.
So, this is the first time since grade school that I made a birthday card, or even just a card in general. I never remembered it being this stressful, the desire to make everything perfect. I think it came out rather well. It might not be funny, but it's definitely light-hearted, and that's always fun. Also, my brother doesn't know I've been practicing art, so I'm sure he'll be impressed by that alone.
I now have to make one more card. Her birthday is Thursday, but I don't really know what I want to do. I know the general theme of what I want to do, but not any particulars. I have four days, so I better think fast! This is my first artistic time-crush. Let's see how I fare.
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