Sue Sews Six Thousand Socks: Swamp for IF and Dr. Seuss

All this month I’ve been paying tribute to Dr. Seuss by creating a Seuss themed image combined with the Illustration Friday prompt. For the previous weeks, I tried to incorporate Seuss’s style into my art.
This week, however, I’ve moved away from his art to show my style.

The prompt for Illustration Friday this week is Swamp. I combined that with Sue from Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss. (Sue is SWAMPED with sock orders and has to sew six thousand socks!) Fox in Socks is one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books, and I’ve always liked Sue, so it was fun to re-imagine this part of the book. In case you’re not familiar with the original, here’s what Mr. Fox says when Sue enters the book:

New socks.

Two socks.

Whose socks?

Sue’s socks.

 

Who sews whose socks?

Sue sews Sue’s socks.

My Sue has similar hair and clothes to the one in Fox in Socks, but she likes polka-dots and sewing lots of socks. They’re not all for her though, because really, who needs 3000 pairs of socks? Not Sue. You’d be swamped if you had to sew six thousand socks too! (Note: not all 6000 socks are pictured here, because that would have made me more than swamped. It would have made me crazy to draw that many in such a short time.)



Who is Sue sewing socks for? I’m glad you asked.

Sue sews Sue’s socks, because with that many, at least some of them have to be for her!
Sue sews Moo’s socks, because Moo helps keep the thread from tangling.
Sew sews Lou’s socks. (Lou is the dove on Moo’s back, the one saying, “coo coo.”)
Sue sews Who’s socks, right away, because Who has owl things to do.
Sue sews Foo’s socks (a.k.a. Bunny Foo-Foo).
Sue sews Boo’s socks … not really, ghosts don’t wear socks (or at least Boo doesn’t).

The original sketch had a few more characters, but it got too crowded. Here’s a close up of the bunny:



Bunny Foo-Foo was fun to draw and I love how his socks turned out. Another character that was fun to draw was Moo:



You can tell by the expression on her face that she thinks Sue is crazy for trying to sew six thousand socks, or maybe she is getting sick of having thread wrapped around her horns. Moo has striped socks because I thought they’d be a nice contrast to her spots and I liked how the blue and white stripes looked on her. It’s hard to see, but Lou also has striped socks. They’re blue and yellow.

If someone asked you to sew six thousand socks, would you do it?

I wouldn’t. I leave the sock sewing to Sue!