Art Attack #230: Birthday Beach Party Puzzle! 🎂

Hey Hive!

We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my drawings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artwork, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started, and lets me track my progress too!

Sean's birthday was a few weeks ago, and for the past few years I've been giving him my art in different forms. Two years ago, I gifted him a custom shirt I made based on a different shirt he has that he really likes.

Here's the link to that post if you want to check it out.

Since I've yet to write about it, I thought I'd share a special piece I did for him last year! I initially got the idea for his present when I came across this ad for custom jigsaw puzzles. This got me thinking if I could draw my own piece and have someone print and cut it out for me into a puzzle, and I managed to find a shop online that will do that and deliver it to me!

I was thinking of what I could draw for him, and while I was looking back at all the art I've done for him I came across this piece from a few years back. I wanted to redo it or make something better, especially since we have a lot more doggos that we follow now.

I wanted to include as many of the doggos and cattos that we follow online, so it took quite a bit of research and screenshots to get the references I wanted.

I don't even think this is all of them but I tried to compile as many as I could.

These are all real pet social media accounts that we have been following for years. Other than the skateboarding English bulldog which is just from a video we watched.

Since I was including so many characters I had to make the background simple and have plenty of space. My idea was to make it a beach party theme since his birthday is during summer time. I went with a nice beach background that I referenced from Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Here's the sketch:

For the dogs I wanted to draw them in a cute style like this, but then I realised it might be a bit difficult to recognise them if I make them all a similar style.

So I scrapped that and just went with tracing their outlines and drawing in their facial features. It worked for most of them but the fluffy pommies were a little difficult.

Since there were so many characters I wanted to create a somewhat cohesive scene so I could group the doggos together.

These were my notes, and I wanted to have different sections like a juice bar, a coconut tree, a big blanket in the middle and some chairs at the side, all with different characters. Since some of the doggos we follow have also unfortunately passed away, I wanted to immortalise those by drawing them in the sky.

After some time sketching, this was the full sketch:

I wanted to try a different style without hard outlines so the next step was to go straight into colours! I started with the background first based on screenshots from Animal Crossing.

Then I started to fill in the characters one by one.

I know I said no hard outlines but I figured since Olaf is a comic book character that it would suit him.

It definitely took a lot of time and a lot of layers.

I still couldn't get the pommies to look right but I tried my best.

In the end we get this for the full piece!I'm not sure if this is that cohesive and the perspective and shadows are off but honestly by the end I was just exhausted.

I was also on a time crunch since I had to send this to the printing company to get them to print it on a puzzle and deliver it in time for Sean's birthday! I don't remember when I started doing this but the idea was in the works at least 2-3 months in advance. I think the actual planning and drawing took about 3 weeks or so.

When the puzzle arrived I was so excited! The printing quality was surprisingly good too, but it came completed already so they could transport it so I had to take it apart before I gave it to Sean on his birthday!

We actually ended up doing the puzzle together during a stream, and you can see the whole process from start to finish in the video above, starting from 2:32:55. Timestamps are in the description as well.

Sean said he hasn't done a jigsaw puzzle since he was about 5 years old. So I asked him if he wanted to look at the complete picture to work out the puzzle but he insisted on doing it without the reference, which definitely made it a lot harder.

I think he had a lot of fun though! I helped him along here and there but I was mostly chatting with my viewers while he worked on it.

The whole puzzle was 200 pieces and about 70% in I think he was mentally exhausted.

But it was all worth it in the end to see his smiling face when he finally finished it! We didn't have a frame for it so we put it back in the plastic that it came in so we could keep it.

Since then we've gotten a frame and the completed puzzle is now hanging above our dining room table.

This is probably one of the more special art presents I've given him. Maybe next time I'll try to do another puzzle for him to match but in a completely different style? We'll see.

Thanks so much for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

---

Check out my previous post in this series!
Art Attack #229: Richy Rich MonopolyCat 🤑