Creating the 2024 New Year Postcard

A step by step process of how I illustrated my New Year's Postcard

Hello Sketchbuds,

With the New Year comes a new Holiday card! I am not the best at sending these during the holiday season but I always make it a point to send these out to the friends, family and art directors who have made the past year memorable. I know some might consider this a waste of time now that we live in the digital world, but I find there is something precious and intimate in receiving art in the mail.

Also, since this is the Sketchbug’s First Paid Post, if you become a Sketchbud (paid subscriber) I will mail one of these postcards to you too!

2024 Postcard Preview

In continuing with the postcard tradition of fantasy seasonal bird people, I wanted the main focus of this card to be turkeys and winter. I love turkeys, specifically the wild ones I see roaming around the NJ and PA woods in the late fall, early winter. I have been ruminating on some ideas of a turkey queen trouncing through the snow and thought it would be nice to try my hands at making that idea real . Plus it’s been snowing in Philadelphia the last few weeks and felt right to go with that type of mood.

Past Postcards

I started off with a base idea. A little girl with a few wild turkeys looking into a lake in the winter and seeing a turkey queen and her entourage in the reflection. I wanted it to feel like that scene in the C.S Lewis’ Magician’s Nephew where the main characters come to an area full of puddles surrounded by greenery. Each puddle has a world inside of it that you can travel to if you jump in. I wanted that feeling but with a wintery, fowl twist of sorts. (Did I like how C.S. Lewis finished off the Narnia series? No. That is a post for another time)

The First Few Ideas