Royal Artist: Family Christmas Card 2006 (Drunken Gnomes)

Monday, November 12, 2007

Family Christmas Card 2006 (Drunken Gnomes)

Well seeing the idea that [the last post Seasons Eatings (or a zombie Christmas)] was rejected I feel that it is only appropriate to show the idea that was chosen by my mother to grace the Royal family Christmas card that year. As usual I made a lot of suggestions that were obscene and devoid of traditional Christmas cheer, leaving my mom no choice but to tell me what to draw. This year she wanted something less "Christmasy", whereas the cards of the last couple of years have all featured Santa.

2002

The Swedish Santa

2003

Why The Elves make the toys

2004

Santa Stuck in a Chimney

2005

Christmas Eric
For 2005 Mom wanted a Santa free card. At first she was interested in something styled after old fashioned Christmas cards that featured Father Time and the Baby New Year. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Father Time was rather like Santa Claus in appearance; I had always seen Father Time more as the Grim Reaper, or simply as a very old man on the verge of death. And so these were the sketches I drew.

New Year Sketch 01

New Years Sketch 02

Of course, these sketches were rejected by my mom, and so this idea was abandoned.

Instead she decided she wanted gnomes. I liked this idea because for the previous two years I was pushing for more Norse mythological Christmas cards, having read the mythology, I saw many Christmas traditions based in it I thought it would be good to use. However, my mom wasn’t as keen on having Thor grace our Christmas card, and said she didn’t want to have to explain what it meant. She always liked gnomes, and as they were an easy way of touching on our Swedish heritage, we went with Gnomes, the pointy hatted, big bearded, itty-bitty people of the Scandinavian mythology.

Gnomes and faeries 01
At first I did a couple of sketches with faeries because they are also part of the Scandinavian mythology, but I didn't go too far with that particular concept because the gnomes were just more fun to draw.