Illustration commission for a local charity — Coostie Illustration & Design

Back in late October I was approached by the charity Equal Arts to be part of a collaboration with two other creatives working on the development of a singing Christmas card project.

Two Christmas card fronts, one with a baking scene and christmas pudding charms, the other with a series of bright decorative baubles

Based in Gateshead, Equal Arts is a leading creative ageing charity, supporting older people and those living with dementia by providing creative opportunities to help improve wellbeing. The project involved two groups (one in a care home and the other residents of assisted living accommodation) working with a musician to write their own special Christmas songs - the idea was that the groups would be filmed performing their songs as a ‘Singing’ Christmas card - and I was asked if I’d be interested in illustrating the two ‘card’ fronts.

This was such a fun project - and my only regret is that timescales and process meant that I didn’t get to meet any of the singer/songwriters in person. For both of the card illustrations, I had a conversation with Caroline Roach (the musician) about how the lyrics for each song and what sort of things had prompted each group to come up with them.

Stir in a wish for everyone

**Wish for Peace**

The group at Grange Lea Care Home had created a song called ‘Wish For Peace’, inspired by their memories of Christmas traditions, such as stirring the charms into the Christmas Pudding.
*“Stir in a wish for everyone*
*For hope, for joy, for times of fun*
*Weave our love in colours so bright*
*Peace for all on Christmas night”*

As you can see, the lyrics really did lend themselves to an illustration focusing on stirring charms into a Christmas pudding. After some research into vintage-style pudding charms, I came up with a rough for approval.

So that it was easier to move things around for format, etc, I decided to create all the elements for the illustration as separate pieces, following my usual process of drawing out the items in black ink, before painting with watercolour, digitising, tidying and then placing.

Separate hand-drawn and painted elements

You can watch the group performing and see the final design, here.

Merry Christmas, wherever you are…

**Planet Christmas**

By contrast, the group at Birch Grove assisted living created a song all about wanting to be home at Christmas, even if you’re lightyears away with serious outer space vibes as well as lots of Christmassy cheer!
*“I’m coming home, it’s not too far,*
*I hear the bells across the stars*
*Ringing out for love and peace for everyone*
*Merry Christmas, wherever you are”*

The immediate concept that leapt to mind involved aliens and space ships, but this didn’t lend itself very well to my illustration style. In the end, I decided to create a series of Christmas tree baubles with decorations that might have inspired the song’s authors. So, a red and gold ‘burning’ bauble, a vintage-style, saucer-shaped silver bauble, a beautiful golden bell and a Scandi-type bauble with a wintery scene showcasing the northern lights in the sky.

I took a similar approach to the other illustration, creating all of my card elements as separate pieces that I brought together digitally.

Rough concept for the Planet Christmas illustration

Hand-drawn and painted elements for Planet Christmas

If you’d like to listen to the song and watch the group performing, you can see the final singing card here.

If you’ve got an illustration project that you’d like to work with me on, you can get in touch via the Contact page with a message - I always love to hear about possible new commissions and am happy to talk through what you’re looking for.