acrylic painting process.  this is the one time of year that i do a 100% non digital painting with acrylic, colored pencils, pens, whatever.  Here are a few process shots.  

I lived in Tokyo for a year and a half until the big earthquake and during that time I took to the Japanese tradition of sending out a new years postcard with that year's asian zodiac animal.  The post office there holds all of these new years postcards and magically delivers them all on January 1st.  2013 is the year of the snake.  red snakes are good luck and white snakes are the embodiments of gods.  The bottom left says "Happy New Year", the single character at the top is "snake" but this character is special and only used to refer to the year of the snake and different one is used in everyday language.  On the right it says 2013 (with a complex Japan specific year numbering system).  The bad thing about gold paint is that it doesn't reproduce well at all.  the good thing is that the real painting looks awesome with gold paint.  Happy New Year!