Designing illustrations for Father's Day Cards

With USA and Europe's Mother's Day sales coming to a close, I now have time to work on a set of Father's Day cards. I wondered, what could be cute and in my style, that dads will also like?

Bears! I thought this card might be cute for kids to give to their dads, or just grown-ups that like cute illustrations. A weird fact about me: I really don't do hugs. But I have memories of how safe I would feel when my dad gave me a big bear hug, and I wanted to capture that feeling for other people to share with their dads.

The sketch phase – I start out with loose sketches of the idea in my head, and then keep drawing over or next to them until I'm happy with the shape.

I have a stack of Kraft blank cards from an emergency Amazon order when I needed Kraft envelopes at the last minute and couldn't find any that didn't include cards. I thought it might be fun to try printing the design as a single colour on them, and I love how it turned out! It toughens up the overall design slightly and makes it a bit more masculine.

Now that I've looked at the initial sketches again, I'm rethinking if I chose the best one for the final design. I'll create a few and compare the finished printouts before I move on to the next idea.