Towards the end of 2019, I was approached by Bridges Shopping Centre to create artwork for their charity Christmas card in partnership with Sunderland Rotary Club. The initial brief was fairly open to interpretation, however, they wanted to showcase the city of Sunderland in a Christmas or Winter setting. The project was originally proposed for 4 unique designs, which then was reduced to one single design due to budget size. I initially proposed 4 ideas, all under the same umbrella theme; Winter animals in the city. The fantasy style of having Sunderland overtaken by Arctic animals like Polar Bears and Emperor Penguins etc. I presented four ideas and we decided the scene of the animals scattered on the frozen-over River Wear with the famous green bridge in the background fit the brief best. I started the drawing by taking some reference photos of the setting and then created a finished plan by photoshopping a selection of animals in. This then went through some revisions because the client felt the scene was a little too busy and we decided on the plan that became the final design. I then started the process of creating the drawing which was a process of following the plan and improvising other areas, for example, I had to remove a bridge from the background because it drew the focus of the more known bridge in the picture. I also had to improvise all of the background because obviously there was no snow in the reference photo and everything would look different in a real Winter setting. Once the design was complete I sent a couple of different versions with a variation in skies going from grey to the more saturated blue that can be seen above. The client also felt that there wasn't enough of an element of Christmas so we discussed ways to subtly add more of the traditional Christmas in and the way we ended up doing that was by adding Santa and his Reindeer landing on the bridge. All in all, I absolutely loved working on this project with the team at Bridges Shopping Centre and I love how the finished product came out.