A Partridge in a Pear Tree

Here is one of my Christmas card designs for this year. If I'd had time I would have liked to have done all 12 Days of Christmas, but life being what it is I only managed the first one.

For this I went back to my love of Golden Age illustration and silhouettes. Her dress is c1880, which is when the rhyme was first published in England. I tried out several costumes from different eras, but eventually settled on this one.

The printed design was glittered. You can see the result here.

The second card design was the reindeer watercolour you can see in this illustration. (I did it last Christmas, so it was a good time-saver)



If you'd like to see the final result of that, you can do so here

All in all I handmade 90 cards, 45 of each design.

Media: Adobe Photoshop CS6 with a Wacom Intuos 3
References: Mostly my own, plus google image searches to check out what partridges looked like, etc.

Enjoy!