“¡Quedados Chinchilas!”

I’m glad to have time to post now that the Spring Musical is over (see my “The Big Bad Musical” post), and this one’s special!

This poster, dubbed “¡Quedados Chinchilas!”, was inspired by a math lesson my Dad taught about population growth by using an example of a chinchilla farm. The questions in the lesson asked how many chinchillas the person would have in two years and how long would it take for there to be ten thousand chinchillas. When he got to the part about the ten thousand chinchillas, he began to explain that the chinchilla farm would actually be a chinchilla ranch and that squirrels would ride the chinchillas. Ten thousand chinchillas is a large number of chinchillas, and according to my Dad it would be apocalyptic. He told of how the chinchillas would wreak havoc over the countryside and how in their wake, a lone surrvivor and a few signs would exclaim one message: “¡CUIDADOS CHINCHILLAS!”

Of course, this called for a poster. So, while I was at Carolina Bible Camp last summer, I drew a sketch of the poster you see above. I thought Dad said “¡QUEDADOS CHINCHILLAS” instead of “¡CUIDADOS CHINCHILLAS!”, so that’s just what I wrote.

A few months later, I scanned the sketch into the computer and I had loads of fun tracing it with the pen tool and coloring everything in. The sun was the hardest part, I had to trace it into a hemicircle and then unite it with black rectangles so that I could use the expand command so that the different segments could be different colors.

After it was finished, I showed it to Dad and he loved it; quite frankly, who couldn’t crack a smile while looking at a squirrel riding a chinchilla into the sunset?