Making Christmas Illustrations
Reflections on making illustrations for a Christmas project and sharing some inspirations that helped me create them.
This time last year I was working on my first Christmas-themed illustration job, for Tottenham Hotspur FC’s Christmas campaign. Luckily I’m a big fan of all things seasonal (1st of December mine pie and all) even if I don’t know much about football. Working on the project made Christmas even more visually magical for me last year, as it’s my experience that the more engrossed you are in a subject, the more you notice it.
I was in Edinburgh last week and saw some gorgeous Christmas window displays that got me all excited about Christmas again. I wanted to share some Winter illustrations from other artists that have inspired me over the years, and to some extent informed the work I made last year.
Always Winter and never Christmas
I remember being curled up with my nose in a book throughout my childhood. Being an avid drawer as well as reader, I’d naturally gravitate towards books with pictures as they had the best of both. There are certain illustrations I can see quite easily if I close my eyes, thanks to the number of times I’d stare at them before bed.
One such image is this one, which I suppose you can now call a classic. It is one of the original illustrations from ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ by Pauline Baynes. Narnia fans will understand my reference above.
In it, we see Lucy and Mr Tumnus heading off to his house, walking through the snow. The promise of tea in the text, contrasting with the chilliness that we get from the deep snow and spindly branches, makes us feel cold and cosy at the same time. I think it’s the anticipation of warmth that makes this one work so well. While it’s not strictly a Christmas illustration, it’s such a key part of the book I’ve allowed it to be included here.
I looked at the Pauline Baynes image again on my first day of researching my Christmas project, to remind myself of that childhood Christmassy feeling.
Father Christmas’ packed lunch
Now, I can’t talk about representations of Christmas in picture books without referencing Raymond Briggs. Both The Snowman and Father Christmas communicate the magic of Winter and, of course, Christmas, without being sentimental. Maybe that’s because his Father Christmas is so wonderfully grumpy, and that The Snowman is a silent picture book that lets images tell the story. Both have very different tones. The Snowman has the ability to make me cry (without fail) through its soft, emotional images, but Brigg’s dry humour made me laugh aloud in Father Christmas as a child watching such a revered character sit on the loo.
In the above image from ‘Father Christmas’ for example, we see Father Christmas having his sandwiches. He’s taking a break, just like every other person who goes to work. He also goes on holiday in the book, something that delighted me as a child as I imagined I might bump into him one day.
Another element I love about Briggs’ work is the combination of magic and the everyday. In a way, Christmas and any festival does this already - we have our usual surroundings, but made magic Thinking about how to use ‘normal’ settings for my illustrations for Tottenham, I took lots of photos of my local area when it was just getting dark. I love an urban or suburban scene with Winter lights!
My favourite type of Christmas image has a contrast between inside and outside, making the viewer want to feel the warmth of being inside while also enjoying the beauty around them. Almost an anticipatory feeling of stepping through the door.
Looking at this image from Father Christmas as an example, we can see how Briggs also used cold and warmth to make this illustration sing.
We can feel the cold of the snow, that Father Christmas inhabits, juxtaposed with the warmth of the houses that we can glimpse through the windows. It reminds me of walking home from school in the leadup to Christmas and peeking into everyone’s living rooms to see their Christmas trees. It’s my favourite thing of magic in the everyday. Just joyful.
Contemporary Christmas
In Benji Davies’ The Snowflake, there’s the same combination of cold and warmth, but in a contemporary setting. The use of light in Davies’ work is something that makes it stand apart in my opinion, and here you can see how he uses light to create the same atmosphere I loved on those walks back from school. If you look carefully, you can see a family looking in one of the windows.
The lovely Helen Stephens whose courses as part of The Goodship Illustration helped me get back into a regular drawing practice a few years ago, wrote an illustrated a Christmas version of her well known book ‘How to Hide a Lion’ called ‘How to Hide a Lion at Christmas’.
It includes this gorgeous spread (above) that has my favourite inside/outside contrast and a lovely perspective as if we are looking down on the town. Helen uses a simple colour palette to great effect, and makes me want to step into the illustration and meet the lion for myself.
Creating my own Christmas illustrations
The story I illustrated ,‘The Socks That Saved Christmas’, is set in contemporary London, which made it familiar to me and excitingly fresh. I was so lucky to be given quite a bit of creative freedom when it came to the setting, and I set it near where I used to live in North London.
For the street scene, where the friends meet at one of their houses, I chose to illustrate a street like the one I used to live on. Or more accurately, one like streets near where I used to live - I actually lived above a wig shop at the time on a very busy road!
I got to try my hand at capturing the feeling of walking home along a London street around Christmas, and admiring all the Christmas trees and lights. I picked up my son from nursery earlier, and he exclaimed at all the decorations people have started to put in their windows near where we live. This year (his second Christmas) he is getting to experience this for the first time, and I wish I could peek inside his brain to remember how it feels.
This year, my family won’t be in the UK for Christmas - so I’m soaking it all up now before we fly to Ghana (where my partner’s family is from) to have a hot Christmas for the first time. I’m hoping to get to do lots of drawing, so let’s see if that ends up being the focus of my next post.
Have lovely holidays all!
Things I’m enjoying:
The Goodship Illustration Business Club which I finally enrolled in. There’s so much content I’m pacing myself, but highly recommend.
My son and I have been enjoying reading ‘Mrs Armitage on Wheels’ by Quentin Blake - my copy from the 90’s
Jumping on the bandwagon and have started Stranger Things season 5
Other places you can find my work:
My sketchbook calendars 2026 were released last month
I have zines of my sketchbooks, which you can find here.
My full portfolio and past work is on my website
As always you can also support my work through my online shop