Happy New Year! I hope you all had a fun and festive night ringing in the new year and have awesome plans for celebrating today! To start off the new year, I am sharing some winter-themed illustrations that I did this week.

As I mentioned in one of my latest posts,  I received new markers and a sketchbook for Christmas. The markers, which are dual tip watercolor markers are, as it turns out, great for illustration.

Inspired by this time of year, I decided to do a couple of recreations of famous winter-characters with these markers.

  
The first is the abominable snowman from “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer.” A classic created in the ’60’s, this character was a prominent part of my childhood and has remained so into my adult life.

I began this drawing by outlining the charter’s contour in light black marker and then filled it in with cross hatching.The final touches were added by filling in his face and hand with light blue.

The second character I chose to illustrate was another we are all familiar with: Olaf from “frozen.” As it turns out, Olaf is actually quite difficult to draw. Due to the fact that I had never drawn Olaf before and that for my first time I was choosing to do so with permanent marker, my Olaf is far from perfect.

    
But that’s OK!

It was still a fun drawing to do and served as a great reminder. So often people view cartoons and characters as “easily done” when in fact, they are quite difficult. Although my Olaf is not perfect, it was still a learning experience.

No matter your level of artistic ability you should always challenge yourself. As with anything, it is the only way you will get better.