This month’s assignment for Make Art that Sells has been so much fun! I’m so excited to share the woodland animals Christmas ornaments I came up with you!

We started with a mini assignment that was all about lumberjacks. I spent an entire day in my studio painting nothing but lumberjacky things. Plaids, stripes, faux bois wood texture, trees.

Tons of pattern work that will be used on another project I’m working on.

Axes for a tshirt design I’ve wanted to make for myself for forever, but haven’t had the time.

And one night, while I played with forest elements, I came up with this funny beaver wearing a knit cap. His huge ridiculous teeth cracked me up. Bad.

I knew I needed to keep going with that guy, so I made up some friends for him. I’m working on beefing up the kids art area of my site – watch for cleaned up art of this group of woodland animals to show up there soon.

The bear blowing on his hot cocoa… The fox casually eating the rabbit… These guys just make me really happy.

I never got around to drawing actual lumberjacks. Then it was announced that the big assignment for April was Christmas ornaments, and my little woodland friends fit that so perfectly I just ran with it!

I’ve got little finishing notes like this in my sketchbook for all of my forest friends.

And here’s what my woodland animals look like all colored up!

My favorite part of these was playing with how they would hang from the tree. The little raccoon’s hand grabs on in classic “hang in there baby” formation, while his bunny rabbit friend’s ears hook over the Christmas tree branch. The fox who couldn’t resist gnawing on his rabbit friend in my concept sketches became a little guy who’s always hungry. I would love to see an alligator clip inside his mouth so he could munch on the Christmas tree branch he’s hanging from!

What do you think of my woodland animals Christmas ornaments?

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