Swimming and Sunshine

My friend and loyal customer in India e-mailed me in quite a panic recently. She had been planning her son's birthday and his brother had announced that he couldn't wait to see what the theme of the card was to be this year. Oops! Yes, she'd forgotten to ask me about it! It really was okay though, there was still quite some time to work with and I was happy to make it for her and pop it in the post.
Her son was turning 9 and had recently won two silver medals in his school's swimming gala. She thought that I could show him wearing the medals, with his blue goggles perched on top of his head. She also wanted me to add his school's logo in the background because apparently he loves his school. Easy peasy!
My friend is always wonderfully encouraging, but the email she sent me when the card arrived just about beats them all!
"Y's card arrived!... I couldn't stop smiling when I opened it... its incredible! I know he will LOVE it! I do! It looks just like him!... Thank you my wonderful, talented friend!". Well, after reading that, I couldn't stop smiling either.

Summer is most definitely here in these parts of the world and it seems to be influencing my artwork. I was asked for two birthday cards, in Hebrew, for men and decided to do something new. I recently worked on a Bat Mitzvah album with a beach (and Harry Potter) theme and remembered the little scene that I had come up with for one of the album pages. I reworked it a little to fit the shape of the card and was pretty happy with the results. I think this might well be a design that pops up again and again.