That’s how Drunxy responded when asked about his coloring / activity book that he hoped to have done by Groundhog Day this year. Well guess what, pal? give me your notes BEFORE you go to sleep for the winter!

So there I was, probably having a beer, and got this idea for a Drunxsutawney Bill coloring book. I don’t know where these ideas come from. You don’t question the muse. I scribbled a few ideas for pages and a cover. Then started to look into the Amazon self publishing options. I had a minimum of 24 pages to fill. I think that includes the blank pages for the backs of the coloring pages. I still was short on ideas. So I started scribbling some more.

It soon dawned on me that there was no way I was going to get this all done inside of a week. Because it was a week until Groundhog Day and I couldn’t come up with this idea two months ago.

As luck would have it, I do believe next year is the ten year anniversary of Drunxy’s inception. So that’s a better launch anyway. And gives me time to amass more material. Make it a party. Why not.

In the meantime I wanted to share the finished cover and a few preliminary steps getting there.

Here is the original sketch.

Had to tweak the composition a bit. Fill in some empty space and get more in line with the 9″ x 9″ book format that I was looking at. I scanned the sketch into Photoshop and used the lasso tool to move individual elements. When I was happy I would transfer or sketch this onto a nicer piece of paper.

A little smudgy (that comes with left handedness). But the final pencils came together alright.

So it begins…

Many layers later…

Adding the final details.

The final image with title. I expect to sell like hotcakes so so Drunxy has some beer money.