Winter themes

The latest two contests I have to write about were to be inspired by "ugly Christmas sweaters" and skiing, respectively. For the ugly sweaters, I was inspired by one of my favorite Christmas movies, "Nightmare Before Christmas," and drew sweaters to fit the silhouettes of most of the main characters. I figured that most people would use a traditional red/green/white color scheme so I tried to differentiate myself by using colors from the movie poster - cream and navy. This was also partly pragmatic, as I knew I'd never be able to finish on time if I tried to draw fully-colored sweaters for each person.



The representations are:

• Jack Skellington: allover bows = maximum festivity
• Sally: cat with hat, since she seems like a cat person
• Mayor: candy canes to help him stay on the cheerful side of his face
• Oogie Boogie: ornaments (showy and shiny, like his lair)
• Dr Finklestein: reindeer, of course - these are more than skeletons though
• Lock (devil kid): snowflake (a cold day in hell!)
• Shock (witch kid): shiny hard candy (sugar and spice and nothing nice)
• Barrel (skeleton kid): penguin (black and white...?)
• Wolfman: a big Ho Ho Ho (awoooo!)
• Behemoth: a tree, in honor of the axe embedded in his head
• Vampire: a tall glass of milk, to have something more seasonally appropriate to drink

This did pretty well in the contest - 111 votes, and 41st place out of 110. My two favorite entries were the hearts and unicorns, and the take on the nutcracker.

For the skiing contest, we were supposed to do it in a "retro" style, and use these colors:   
Color by COLOURlovers

Plus white. I knew most people would do designs using white or the light blue as a background, so I stayed away from that. I decided to go as retro as possible and was inspired by some of the earliest rock carvings depicting skiiers, like this guy.



The background pattern is based on the sashiko-style design I used in the star designs, and the red-and-yellow in the foreground is my good 'ol eucalyptus. This came in 89 out of 120 with 46 votes. My favorites were the mountains and cocktail ingredients.