Belated Christmas 2009

So here I am, working on a belated Christmas picture.

I had this idea awhile ago, and it came up while I was waiting in the dentist's waiting room, flipping through some magazine and saw these awesome snow-themed pictures. As usual, I'm in my sappy Christmas mood, and just started devloping some mini short story in my head involving a lonely bear and an orphan Labrador puppy with a broken arm.... but how despite their situations, being together with someone you love can make any seemingly bad Christmas, become the best Christmas.

I imagined both of them in a semi-feral form (ie: Lion King, Brother Bear, etc.), living in the woods. The Labrador pup, as naive is the pup is, made pretty his favorite stick, to give as a gift to his papabear, using foliage as ribbons. There's gonna be a gift that the bear has given to the pup, and I was thinking of making it a pinecone, but I haven't decided yet....

I set plans with a friend of mine, Kashra, to write up a short short story to be paired up with this picture.

There was a quote floating around in my head that helped this creative train along, for this picture: "It may not look like much, but this has been the best Christmas, of all Christmases."

This picture was definitely one of those pieces that I kept going back and fourth on between the amount of toony-ness. But I think I landed in a comfy, decently toony area that I think I'll be happy with.

I'm aiming for a snowy, cool-toned picture here, something that's calm and peaceful and most of all, cute.

*Crosses fingers*