Presenting Santa Claus and the Christmas family. Originally requested by a user of the IStock forums, Santa and the rest of the family members were drawn separately, layered and colored before being placed together as a happy legion. As you can see I did not employ my standard outlining to this one in order to keep a very soft-edged look to it despite the blaring christmas colors. I think I lost a few years of my life on this one lol, but it’s worth it. The image carries a higher price-tag than the norm due to every image being a strong element on it’s own. Were you to purchase the EPS and pull it apart, you will see that there were no shortcuts used or tricks employed outside of create, cut, paste and group.

The files can be viewed in detail and bought at the following locations:

IstockPhoto.com – ID: 10943811
Dreamstime.com – ID: 11521567

Who is the River Queen?
The River Queen is a piece that I got inspired to create from my friend’s fiance who continuously schools us at Texas Hold’em. My intent was to make her race ambiguous but to keep her as relative to her inspiration as possible.

Medium and method of creativity
As usual I took a trip to the local Barnes and Nobles with the sketchbook in tow and sketched the happy lady with her hand raised. Once I had the image together, I took her home and scanned her then found a poker table online for inspiration. The table was drawn and scanned similar to the lady and the method I used to make them vector was to trace the lines first using the pen tool and connect the points to make shapes. The River Queen is 100% comprised of shapes no lines, in order to make the increase and decrease of her size clean without compromise. It is the same methodology I use for logos.

The River Queen can be downloaded at the following links:

- IstockPhoto – Stock vector | File #: 10354380
- Dreamstime – ID: 10637614