25 GAYS of CHRISTMAS - Sketches

And now it's time to share with you the Original sketches I did for my Artworks of the 25 Gays of Christmas.

After my experience with 31 Days of Witches, I found it very tempting to make a series for the Christmas season, playing with the advent calendar tradition.

As 31 Days of Witches had been very heavy for me (for having illustrated for 31 days without stopping), I thought that for Christmas, the challenge of making 25 illustrations would be a little lighter.

Little did I know that in the end, the 25 Gays of Christmas turned out to be an even harder series...

Right after I did my studies for the Art of Sagittarius, I made some small sketches (based on old versions I created when I was very young, about Father Christmas) of what I had in mind for this Christmas... and just like in 31 Days of Witches, here in 25 Gays of Christmas, I would do 5 themes in this new series:
Christmas Trees (where we would accompany characters choosing and setting up their Christmas trees), Treats and Gifts (where we could see characters planning their gifts, or even exchanging treats with each other), Something to Eat (a pun both about Christmas foods, and about the instigation of sex), Naughty Krampus (where we would see a BDSM version of the infamous Krampus, searching for the naughty ones always in an extremely provocative and sexual way) and Father Christmas (where we would accompany Santa Claus preparing himself for Christmas).
(... and as a consequence, we would see all the artworks creating a sense of preparations for Christmas... )

Then, to make it even more evident to viewers, I decided that the frame of each artwork would help them to identify what that artwork was about.

And since Christmas is a very colorful season, here in this series I also decided to apply a colorfull palette to each Artworks. But still, always using some colors that emphasize the color of each theme: Christmas Trees would be Dark Blue with a hint of Green, Treats and Gifts would be Green, Something to Eat would be Yellow, Dark Red for Naughty Krampus, and a Light Red for Father Christmas. (I made this choice based on the most prevalent colors of Christmas)

Just like in 31 Days of Witches, in this new series I would make One New Art a Day... and then in fact, starting on December 1st, I started to illustrate the Arts for 25 Gays of Chritsmas.

But, the simple fact that the arts have elaborate variations of colors, helped to demand more execution time and ... without me realizing it, due to my excitement, I started to make Arts a little more detailed than for 31 Days of Witches. ..

on each Day, I spent an average of 8 hours for each art (considering the Sketches, something like 6 hours of Development of the final Art, plus all the work of export and publication), and all this in a Day where I still work 9 hours for a company.

there were days when I would wake up at 6 am one day, to only go to sleep after 3 am the next day, then wake up 4 hours later and go back to work.

Because of that, some original plans that I had in my mind, had to be cut, because there was no time to do it.

But... despite so much effort, I was in LOVE!

The possibility to create every day, to play with Christmas, and to see the excitement of those who accompanied and supported this series... oh... it was so Exciting and Wonderful.

In the End, again (as in 31 Days of Witches) I was exhausted... extremely tired... but in my last Artwork, with that Jolly Sweet Father Christmas, I felt a little of melancholy (you know… the same as we feel when we have to say goodbye to a very nice place/people we visited and now we have to go back)…

and when I was publishing it, while writing the accompanying text for the art, some tears roll out from my eyes while I was smiling…
It was really a Magical Season to me… ✨💖

Thank you for everything my Dear.

And I hope you enjoy these Sketches! ✨🎄✨