Years ago, I painted my mom a mailbox in “my style” (dragons and creatures and the like; she didn’t want flowers or trees, she wanted something I would normally do). It was an acrylic painted wooden mailbox, and she liked it a lot. Close to ten years later, I have tried to do other mailboxes for her, as the original was getting pretty weathered and my art skills had improved. Two (or three) failed mailboxes have come and gone…and now, I finally have created a worthy replacement.

Mailbox, Now with More Norse Fairytale Goodness

I created a digital illustration in Photoshop that was applied to a plain pine mailbox with iron-on transfer paper. This method I used was far from perfect, but I’m really happy with how it turned out. The merging of the iron-transfer paper with the mailbox produced a bit of a wood-bubble-grain-paper texture effect, which I really like

The mailbox is a mesh of norse mythology and fairytales – Yggdrasils (world tree) is the ‘setting/frame’ (you can see the unnamed eagle and Veðrfölnir the hawk at the very top). I threw in my own interpretation of the four stags, and some original characters I designed (based on fairytales) were added for good measure. Tættec is on top of the lid, with a half-troll to her left and her now calf-headed sister to the right. At the sides are two characters, “the Norman Lion” and Cerdic. And in between the two deer in the front panel is Tættec’s goat, Brúsi. I’ll post just the digital image in the weeks to come, along with details about the characters, who are part of my (distant future) comic book/graphic novel/illustrated story Tatterhood.

I used stock from MoonsongStock, xNickixStockx, Sassy-Stock, and LughoftheLongArm as reference for the eagle, the two main deer and the rats (they’re in there!). I had a screen-capture from Robin Hood (Errol Flynn) that I used as ‘arm/deer’ reference for part of Cerdic. And I used a reference from a picture of a headless guy in a red shirt holding a fawn for the Norman Lion pose – for the life of me, I can’t find the source, but I’m determined to dig it up again! I bought the pine mailbox from Country Bear Woodcrafts and the paper from Gold Seal Specialty Papers. It was surprisingly hard to find a plain pine mailbox and 11×17 dark t-shirt iron-on transfer paper that didn’t break the bank!

Whew, that’s a lot of text. I promise, next update there will be more images, less words.

Ah, who am I kidding – there’s going to be text.

Blitzen

…making blintz (with Jersey the Bugg)

Potpourri Reindeer Sachet!

Reindeer illustrations aren’t just for cards, they’re for making stuff smell sweet!

Prancer

When I was making Christmas cards this year, I made several variations of each deer; so this particular Prancer features Simon the (always grouchy) Cat.