Frank's Sketchbook Entry of the Day

Last week was my friend Katie's birthday. I got a card from the kid's section because everything else was crap, plus there's a long-running joke/not-a-joke about her chaotic, inner child being pretty close to the surface (and I actually mean that in a positive sense). She's also not fond of being cold and in upstate New York it is now the cold season. The card said something about being "such a cool kid" and that conjured an image in my mind and thus I drew it. She seemed properly amused by it and even noticed details like how she was shivering while the snowman was sweating. The full-size image is here.

Also, for the curious, the text of the card that was partially cut off in the scan (since I mostly wanted just the drawing, but I figured keeping the word "cooler" was OK, as the blue underline was my addition) reads:

And how does
an awesome kid
like you
get cooler
every year?

I kind of figured that the picture answers that question.

Bonus item: I made a few test drawings of the character and some of the elements as I tried to figure out how it should look. There's an evolution of the character, plus I alternatd from the parka with the furry hood (which I eventually used in the final version) and a ski-cap with two points with fuzzy balls attached to them evetually settling on the parka. (Aside: The ski cap hat appears in this drawing involving antics with a trust sled. Whoa…I just realized her legs are in the identical pose. Totally unintentional. Probably just to make it visually more interesting and easier to tell what they are.) There were other elements including sitting on something that became the ice blocks. And amusingly, all of the test images had arms that were just anatomically wrong, even for a cartoon. I think out of sheer luck, the final version looked a little more reasonable or at least visually understandable. In the final version I added the puddles and a little blue color to the ice and puddles. Here are the test drawings.