Yuletide Greetings from Baba Yaga’s Gingerbread Hut

A little storybook, a little whimsy… welcome to Baba Yaga’s Gingerbread Hut.

I often find, when trying to pick out holiday cards, that none of them really fit my style. The artwork might be okay, but the greeting inside might be off – or the other way around. I spent years, though, kind of trying to tamp down my sense of humor and maybe it’s being in my 40s now or maybe it’s finally embracing calling myself an artist, but I decided this year to forego the generic cards that don’t feel like me and do my own.

The gingerbread house came together pretty easily. I knew what colors I wanted to use, the techniques I wanted to integrate to create the texture, etc. The chicken legs, however… that was far more involved for what feels like such a simple element. I have several pages in my sketchbook of just outright play – trying different layering of colors, techniques to capture the feathers, trying different styles – from more realism to doodle-like – all in an attempt to make sure the legs matched the house. Ultimately, I ended up falling in love with a look that skewed more pine cone than feathers, and I’m really happy I went that direction.

And, of course, I had to include a little artists tag/mark on the back of the cards just so all the family knows the artwork is mine 🙂