For the tenth anniversary of my marriage to  bunnyhugger I drew this, an illustration of her and her sidekick Chitter as the ride-height-sign characters for some roller coaster somewhere. And, as the tenth is the tin anniversary, I got it printed onto a tin sign.

Working on something that I hoped to have printed out at 12-by-16-inches intimidated me, as I'm well aware of how my digital drawing style takes shortcuts about things such as how lines connect and don't overlap and such. Especially as I initially mis-typed the picture dimensions and had to re-start from scratch more than once somehow. It's also impressed on me just how hard this sort of public sign design can be; it's a kind of art you don't see explained in your basic how-to-draw textbooks.

One late addition was putting in a little patch of darker grey on Chitter's right paw because even though I believe it 'should' be hidden from view it looked wrong, and I finally yielded to the logic that you can't prove a picture is proportioned right.

Chitter's design is closely based on that interloper cute squirrel from the first Screwy Squirrel cartoon, because while he's not a cartoon character, having a more photorealistic squirrel clashed with the genre of picture this is meant to be. There is also a touch of Kozmo, the sometimes-shapeshifting chipmunk mascot of Knoebels amusement park in Pennsylvania, in his look too. Also I am so happy with how BunnyHugger's paw touches his head as it's maybe my most successful character-interaction illustration to date.

Can you spot all the ways I snuck hearts into the picture?