brothers calendar

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DIY Calendar

As the resident artist of the family, I tend to think of different references to use in my pieces and which art projects I want to focus on. In the middle of March, I had been quite busy with work so, I decided to tackle a big art project during spring break. Once I clocked out from work on Friday, I began researching ideas only to come up with nothing that interested me.

Next Project inspiration

That is until I spent time with my little brother. While helping clean his room, I noticed that he didn’t have a current calendar for the year. I decided I would go to the store with my sister and pick one up. Sadly, the store was completely out. After mentioning the news to my brother, inspiration struck. I am an artist, aren’t I? I can just make a DIY calendar for him, myself.

Nothing like a good DIY Calendar bribe

For starters, my brother and I discussed themes for his calendar. After a long discussion, he settled on Disney. Next, my brother was allowed to pick one character for each month. Since we were already in March, I would only need to draw nine characters of his choosing. The nine characters that my brother chose were Peter Pan, Simba, Nick Wilde, Flynn Rider, Stitch, Pascal, Genie, Fantasia Mickey Mouse, Hercules, and Olaf.

I had nine characters to draw and I was beginning to feel that there was no way I could get the calendar done when I hoped. However, that was COVID-19 had caused me to be quarantined from the outside world. Full disclosure here, I am obsessed with Disney’s Tangled and I have to admit that this is not what I had in mind when I wished I could be like Rapunzel.

Designing his Calendar

Now that I knew I wouldn’t be leaving my metaphorical tower for the rest of spring break, I turned on my Disney tunes, grabbed my supplies and got to work. I began the calendar with Peter Pan. I started my layout by lightly sketching Peter Pan’s general figure and then added in features. After I cleaned up some errors on my sketch, I was ready to add color.

For this project, I used premium colored pencils to give a good pop of color. This saved me a lot of time because the drying time that painting would need wouldn’t be needed. Once that was finished, I added the month in the corner in the matching movie title font and the days of the month below.

Adding the finishing touches

Then, I sealed my drawing with Krylon sealer. This step keeps the colored pencil from transferring onto the days of the month page below. After I finished drawing Peter Pan. I went on to drawing the other characters in order based on the months that they would be featured in. By the time I got to June, I was really struggling drawing Flynn. A lot of time was wasted in my attempts on Flynn
Rider.  So I went and  asked my brother if he could change it up. He went with Perry the Platypus from Phineas and Ferb. This chang allowed me to get the rest of the calendar finished in three days.

After spraying the sealer on the finished months, I began work on the cover of the calendar. I decided to write the calendar title in the Disney font to give the calendar a nice finishing touch. I’m not lying when I say this process was quite time consuming. There were times that I felt that I wouldn’t be able to finish.Overall, I was glad that I got to do something that I hadn’t before and my brother got a DIY calendar that he loves.