Tis the Season to be Merry
Drawing Holiday Movie Characters
Visiting the ghosts of Christmas past, but in a good way.
I have been inspired to draw my favorite characters from holiday movies for many years, but one movie has stood out from the rest, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989).
In December of 2010 I decided to create an illustration of Cousin Eddie and Uncle Lewis from Christmas Vacation. I posted the illustrations on social media. I got an email from Roger at A&R Collectibles wanting to commission illustrations for banners both in the store and online to promote their Christmas Vacation inspired mouse mugs.
The banner illustrations lead to creating an illustration of Mary and Clark in the department store scene of Christmas Vacation for actress Nicolette Scorsese, Mary, to sign at a promotional event at the Fox Valley Mall in Aurora near Chicago. The movie is set in the Greater Chicago area.
This is an alternate version of the illustration that was never published, and I really liked. We agreed the white background version was better for Nicolette to have space to autograph.
I did get an autographed copy from Nicolette (thank you, Nicolette!!).
The beauty of creating illustrations and putting them out into the world is that you never know what will happen. The true joy of creation is in creating your art, not what happens afterwards.
Be kind to yourself on your creative journey.
Here are the original sketches for the illustrations. I do often make notes on the sketches about the things that I would like to correct or colors. Mary and Clark are a digital sketch that I did on an old iPad, way before the Apple Pencil came along.
Thank you for reading my newsletter. The newsletter and illustrations take time and effort to create. You can support the newsletter and my illustrations by forwarding the newsletter to someone who would like it or by signing up for the paid version. Like ❤️ or leave a comment 💬 to help SubStack find and promote the newsletter.
You can also Buy T-Shirts, make a purchase in my digital shop, or give a one-time tip on Buy Me a Coffee.
Buy Me a Coffee (Ko-Fi.com) makes it easy to support the newsletter and my art. In just a couple of taps, you can make a contribution (buy me a coffee). It doesn't even require you to create an account.
Free Holiday Download
You can still download FREE holiday gift tags to print and color.
The Holiday Coloring and Activity Mini-Book is available for download in my Ko-Fi Art Shop. The book is a FREE digital download or you can pay whatever you want.
You have reached the end of the newsletter. Here is the clip with Mary and Clark from Christmas Vacation that inspired the 2012 illustration.