Illustration Friday - Tea

*click on the illustration to see it larger*

I was thinking about the Illustration Friday topic this week, of "Tea" and as I was snoozing this morning an image kind of popped into my mind of an elephant having tea. I pictured the elephant next to a delicate little tea table. This morning my agent, Bradley, called to remind me I hadn't posted any illustration in few days and since I like to draw things such as the squirrel's tea party (that's an old one!) he thought I should add a Tea illustration to my to-do list for the day.

I've been focused on finishing my self-promotion packages which still haven't actually gone out. I've been working on the cards for some time, and then there's finding the updated addresses, printing labels, printing the cards, and assembling a package for each publisher with a letter, business card etc. Some publishers ask for SASEs, which I usually don't send because if they don't want to hire me I don't really like getting a letter telling me so. But I do occasionally get an encouragement, a please-do-keep-sending-samples reply, so I include a SASE if they ask me to. In short, I thought this should be my main priority this week, but then again something is wrong if I can't take time out to draw an elephant drinking tea.

This one was good practise for me because before I even started down to sketch I had to think about it. Is the elephant going to pick up those teacups with those thick legs? Or possibly just dip the trunk in for a sip? Does it even matter? Creating whimsical animal characters can seem very simple but if something isn't quite right it just looks awkward. That being said, there's lots of room for the imagination, and I generally have to work on being less logical about it. After a quick blogging-world trip, I was inspired by Molly Chicken's lovely site, the cheerful colours, the delightful Frannie, her adorable bear, and the package she just received from the talented Marion whose site is called tea-time! If that's not a sign I don't know what is. (her site has some pictures of bird teacups that I am now coveting madly even though I just discovered they exist..)

Once I sat down to sketch, this is what emerged, and I realized it was actually a little girl elephant and she was sharing the tea with a very small friend... p.s. I think I'll call her Ella!thank you everyone for visiting!