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It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
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Continuing from yesterday, here are more Christmas giftware designs I created for various lines.
The “thin” snowman is from the same line as the “thin” Santa I shared yesterday.
I’m also sharing some designs I did for a baby shoe ornament line called Baby Steps. Rather than show my drawings, I thought I’d show you the finished product from images scanned from Cast Art Industries’ catalog. I designed about a dozen of these Christmas ornaments. I also designed another dozen of these, which were non-Christmas, musical versions, and of which I’m including an image.
My last post covered Disney’s Pooh & Friends products I designed for the giftware industry, many of them for Christmas. I did many Christmas designs for other giftware lines as well. Those designs covered many categories, including figurines, ornaments, musicals, water-balls, and other items.
Here are several designs I did for various lines. These illustrations were done for design purposes only and were not “finished” pieces of art meant for public consumption. As before, I’m simply offering a glimpse into the artwork used to manufacture giftware products. I’ll be posting more from these same lines in the days ahead.
This was a Santa-character line I created for Christmas. I had done two different color schemes for this line. Once I gave Cast Art in-studio product painter, Julio Flores, designs with color schemes, there was usually no reason to color additional designs unless the design was elaborate enough to warrant providing additional direction.
I was originally hired at Cast Art Industries to illustrate licensing art for the Dreamsicles giftware line. I quickly also took on the additional duties of designing figurines and other product lines (as well as illustrating & designing packaging, catalogs, ephemera, etc). Most of the Dreamsicles illustrations were mixed media, done in colored pencil, pastels and gouache, and they were quite small (around 4×5 inches only). This was one of only a few of the larger illustrations, and it was probably the only one executed in oil paint.
The illustration I created for this gift bag was also larger than average, so that it would reproduce well.
After working on this line for the better part of eight years, I was pretty tired of looking at it. I don’t think I’ve posted any of it, however, so I’ll spend this week showing a few of the things I did for this line. It’s not remotely close to the best stuff I’ve ever created, but it gives an idea of some of the things one does for a paycheck. On the positive side, Cast Art was a fun company at which to find myself working. The people there were great, and I have no regrets for the time spent there. I often miss working in that studio, and I still keep in contact with some of the people with whom I worked before the company folded. It’s too bad that entire industry took a dive. I’ve had an opportunity to work for most of the bigger companies in giftware. Today, almost all of those companies have gone the way of the dodo.
I designed and illustrated this Dreamsicles spice jar collection for Lenox, who I think is no longer in business.
Though I’ve never had any professional training, I learned a lot about doing “cute” stuff from Tim Fabrizio, who was the senior designer at Cast Art when I arrived. Before working with Tim, I never cared much for “cute”. In fact, prior to working at Cast Art, I never even used the word “cute”. I recall my early days there, hearing all of these grown men having discussions about giftware and using the word “cute” so frequently. I never thought that term would enter my vocabulary, but, well, “when in Rome…”