Salescake

I was making up a story for the kids, to keep them entertained while we were driving. The story involved a salesperson who was actually a cake. So he's Bob the Salescake. This makes more sense when you realize the rest of the story involves vegetarian anteaters, rocket-powered bicycles, clouds in a school locker, and a bear (there's always a bear in the stories I make up for them. They seem to like bears).

The illustration style is vaguely Tenniel, the illustrator of Alice in Wonderland. Yep, I've been re-reading the Alice books again because the movie came out. Actually, the movie didn't really do much for me at all, so if I hadn't been reading them beforehand, I probably would be starting now to clear my head.

At any rate, I like the older style of the Alice illustrations. Since I don't really know how to do etchings, I decided to go instead for sepia on aged-looking paper. Yes, I know, actually quite unlike Tenniel's drawings, but still, I tried to go for something that could be an etching instead of being a painting or a watercolor. And Tenniel's illustrations were, in fact, engraved by the Dalziel Brothers, so I could always look at it like that. This is what I'll send off to the engraver for printing, I'll tell myself in my Victorian-illustrator-wannabe mind.

Totally loving this older-looking paper – it's the same one I used for the Valentine's Day/Chinese New Year card. More of this kind of drawing will inevitably show up again sooner or later.