MISTER JANUARY

Even though we are half way through 2011 I still feel like it just started. But 2012 is coming, as evidenced by the fact that I just finished a piece for the NPR calendar for 2012.
The assignment was pretty wide open and I sent these two sketches.

To my delight, they chose the burnt eggs one. This is sort of based on my personal NPR "driveway moment". In the morning I make eggs sometimes for Teddy and Oskar. While I'm sipping my first coffee I'll tune into NPR and I've burned a lot of eggs because I was so engrossed. This happens a lot. And it doesn't help that I don't eat eggs myself (yuck!) and I only learned how to cook them properly a couple years ago.

For various reasons we decided to make the gorillas into bears and I came up with this.

They thought the smoke was a bit heavy so I added a little texture to it.

And lastly, it was decided that the bear could look like he is enjoying himself a little more, so I added extra enjoyment.

They chose it for January which seems fitting. I was super psyched to work with everyone at NPR, everyone I had contact with had a great sense of humor and good suggestions to turn this into a fun piece. 

And with all the flack that NPR has been getting from the Republicans, I was extra happy to contribute to their fund raising efforts.

For the record, ALL the funding that NPR receives from the Government would pay for 44 seconds of the Iraq war. But I digress....