
These calendar pages are made possible by patrons, who get them a little bit early, along with alternative colourways, and other sneak-peeks and behind-the-scenes art: patreon.com/tanaudel. It is also supported by those very kind people who throw a few dollars towards it via the tip jar: ko-fi.com/tanaudel. I’ve just had my birthday, and support for the calendar would be a very nice gift!
Onward to…
BEETLES!
SO, this began with the intention of working on “The Little Match Girl”, bounced off my Kindling cover art, got immediately sucked into the orbit of A. A. Milne’s poem “Forgiven” (a.k.a. Alexander Beetle) and now is also for Renfield.
Here is a slightly softer colourway, although I like the garish one above best — it reminds me of vintage tablecloths.

Here is the sketch and a very rough test of how the colours might work.

Here are the inks — I wanted slightly heavier lines than usual, in keeping with the sketch, so I used a ZIG Kuretake Mangaka brush-tip pen for the fine lines, and a very large Pitt Artist marker to fill in the backgrounds.

I’ll put patterns up soon (last month’s came up so nice! The Spoonflower swatches look gorgeous and I got a very silky-fleecy blanket of the multi-colour version via Redbubble.)
And below, for personal use, are coloured and colourable files (patrons get a few extra colourways and resolutions).
You’ll see that when colouring it, I selected some areas of pure black and colourised them to give different effects.



Supporting the calendar:
The calendar is a work of joy, but it also takes a lot of time. Here are some ways to help make it possible:
- You can contribute to the calendar (and get it and other behind-the-scenes things early) at patreon.com/tanaudel (starts at US$1/month).
- Or tip the artist (me) a few dollars through Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/tanaudel. Either is greatly appreciated!
- Buy a PDF colouring book of last year’s illustrations, from $3: 2022 Colouring Pages PDF
- And of course many previous designs are available as prints etc on Redbubble and Spoonflower.
- Also, I have a very infrequent mailing list for occasional updates/major announcements: Mailing List Sign-Up