I’m back from my very 1st Christmas holidays in the USA, which I spent at my wife’s family in Westcliffe, Colorado: beautiful mountains and wonderful people there! I didn’t want to end up the year without sharing with you some precious things that this Christmas brought to me. Starting over in a new country and a new home can get a little uncomfortable for Christmas but these little things just helped me so bad to make me feel like home…

So, my Christmas holidays were not just about party. I did some drawings with a very special friend: Ryan. He is my wife’s nephew and this has been the first time we’ve met him. I spent an unforgettable time playing and drawing houses, goblins and dragons with him. And he made me remember that Christmas is after all a holiday for children’s and that’s all!

Christmas card by Leah Palmer Preiss

My friend artist and illustrator Leah Palmer Preiss sent me one of the most precious Christmas cards I’ve ever received in my life. She is one of the artists I like the most today and one of the finest people I’ve met since I moved to the US. I admire so much the craftsmanship in Leah’s work: the details, the paper effects, the sparkling glitter on the bird, and of course her amazing handwritten calligraphy. I love so much this card that I will keep it on view at home for the rest of the year and I’m sure it will be there also for all the forthcoming Christmas. Thank you Leah, you should have seen my smile when I got your card!

Our friend Lena sent us a couple of CDs from her ambient music label, Hypnos: “Echoes of Polyphymnia” -an ambient compilation of female artists- and “Extended Gestures for Cello” - Lena’s solo album-. This is some of the most beautiful and tasteful ambient music I’ve listened to in a long time! I love the deep, dark and texture atmospheres in her music. Thank you Lena!

My friend Brian Burman lives in Switzerland and he composes wonderful music for films. Just like me, Brian is also a fan of animation and there’s something cinematic about his music that I love so much! He just sent me his latest work “Landscape in Movement”, a compilation of works for different films. You can listen to some of this amazing music at Brian Burman’s Myspace. Thanks Brian!

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During the week after Christmas, I will be sending promotional postcards to editors, agents and magazines in US and Canada. I already have a bunch of postcards that I got printed featuring “The Homesick Willow” illustration. I thing they turned out pretty good, considering that the actual size of the original illustration is 10 times bigger than the postcard.

If you are an editor, illustration agent, or an illustration oriented magazine, and you want to get a postcard from me, please contact me and let me know and I’ll include you in my mailing list.

During the next week, it’s probably going to be a little quiet in the blog because of the Christmas holidays, which I’m spending with Naomi’s family in Colorado. I wish you all a wonderful time full magic and illusion!

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As I said in my former post, I’m sharing with you some background stuff related to the new Christmas greeting card that I recently put on the Shop. Here is another illustration for this year’s Christmas card concept, featuring the Tzoo Tzoos. It was also colored and finished for printing but finally I decided to just go for the Fifofant illustration.

The character of the Fifofant, was actually conceived back in the early 90’s. The idea came originally from a few children’s illustrations of an elephant that I had formerly done for my first portfolio at the time. Theis one, called “Elephantasia”, was a watercolor.

I later designed this Fifofant creature for a puppet that I made using latex and artificial fur fabric. Sadly, I don’t keep the preliminary sketches and clay casts anymore. As a matter of fact, I don’t even keep the puppet itself! I just have a home video of it sitting in a self surrounded by Arthur Rackham books at my old apartment in Madrid. So the pictures you can see here are stills from this video.

This is not the only puppet I have done before. As a teenager, I always wished that I could work for Jim Henson. In the future, I really wish I can find time to make puppets of my characters and maybe put them on sale. It’s something that I’ve been missing for many years now but to do it properly you need plenty of workshop space and an investment in tools and materials. Time will tell…

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who is supporting me and buying staff from my new Shop. I also wanted to let you know that the Fifofants are becoming so “beloved” that I’m thinking of maybe doing a short tale about them sometime in the next year. Thank you all for the wonderful feedback!

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I’m happy to introduce a new Christmas greeting card on the Shop. As you may have seen in former blog posts, for the last days I’ve been doing sketches and considering different ideas for the greeting card. Finally, I came up with something completely different. My original idea was to do something a little alternative from the typical modern Christmas iconography. I decided to focus on what I believe the real spirit of Christmas is. And for me, the true spirit of Christmas is about love and children. And that is all.

So I decided to portray some of my strange creatures giving love to each other. In this case, I picked this portrait of an adorable creature called Fifofant. I had originally drawn this creature for the first time back in the early 90’s and I even built a puppet of it. I may show you some other drawings and designs for the Christmas card -including one featuring the Tzoo Tzoo- and some old illustrations of the Fifofant in a forthcoming post.

The new postcards are on sale on Cafepress throughout my Shop. You can purchase them individually and in packages of 10 and 20 cards and I highly recommend the matte paper for this particular illustration because it will provide a more vintage look to the card. This postcard will be only available until Dec 23th.

I want to take this opportunity to wish you all a wonderful holidays with the ones you love and say once more that: Christmas stands for love!
Love to everyone,
Koldo

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