Drifting through the starry void, he felt as one with the cosmos. It was utter harmony and contentment. His shaggy hair floated weightlessly about him, catching glints of light from distant nebula. He pondered the vastness stretching infinitely out in every direction before him, and something occurred to him.
“Hey, man, it’s Tina’s birthday. Far out!”
Tina has taken another lap around the sun and a certain spacefaring hippie has been watching it all go by from the depths of outer space. Yes, Cosmic Maaaaaannnn is back for another birthday card! His first appearance was in an anniversary card back in 2011. The tattered flower child would reappear here and there in greeting card form when I had time to draw him and when I didn’t have a hysterically funny joke in mind.
I guess I still had the Alien soundtrack on the brain as I took to cooking up the joke for this year’s birthday card thus the “In Space…” joke.
I drew a couple of variations of Cosmic Maaaaaannnn in a few different sketchbooks, but the final version above was drawn in pencil and finished with my Sailor fountain pens in a Fabriano 1264 Mixed Media pad. The pages in the sketchbook are perforated for easy removal, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull it from the pad. I’m hoping to have a complete sketchbook composed entirely of inked drawings. I may get there yet.
I scanned the drawing and brought it into Affinity Photo in order to color it in. I used some bits and pieces from the work I illustrated for Jim Curtis’ science fiction novels as well as some letter treatments I worked up in Affinity Designer. The space hippie was on a separate layer so I decided to rotate him to give him more of a weightless feel.
Happy birthday, Tina!
Happy 29th (again) to her!!! 🙂