penelope in winter - markers

Hey! Phew, I finally finished this one at last. It took a little while, and was a little nerve racking with the red over top of such a light background since red is such a strong colour, a little smudge would pretty much be permanent. LOL.

I did the background first with a series of Cool Greys, layering in all the trees and snow, then I took a colourless blender and dotted the while bg, to give that dense snowy look (I showed this technique before), then coloured Penelope, that way I didn't have to worry about accidentally dragging red out into the bg when I tried to colour it. I then couldn't decide on the birds colour, so I scanned it once Penelope was nearly done, and then coloured the little bird roughly a few different colours:

Seeing which bird would look the best!

It was pretty clear to me after seeing this that the red bird would be best. it complimented her dress well, and still stood out!

So, then I finished colouring it, and then I put copper leaf on a few of the beads in her hair, and on the birds longest tail feather. The original looks way way way better than online, partially because of the copper leaf looking so special in real life,but also the yellows didn't scan well, so the warm light casting on the snow between the trees just kind of... died...

Anyway, thought I'd share my little drawing!

(crosspost from markerguru)

White Pheonix Chrismtas card

SO I finished my Christmas card entry for the Opus Staff contest.  I think it turned out well. I'll be pissed if i don't win HAHA!

Okay as always, I'll give a little bit about the process:
I inked it in Prismacolour brown fineliner. Its like a sakura micron style pen, but its made by prismacolour.
Then I used frisket Film to cut out the blue box area, leaving everything else covered in frisket. I used my LetraJet Marker airbrush and Blue Pearl Promarker and airbrushed the bg in a circular pattern being sure to make some rather obvious rings. I peeled off the frisket, and then used Copic Markers on the rest of it. Cad Red, Peony, mauve shadow, line green, Yellow green, light pink, cad yellow, and a mix colour I made was my palette. I did light layers.

And thats that.
It was my first real attempt using the frisket film and I must say it was a delight. a real delight! I've had some people caution me that a lot of the low tack frisket film would tooth my paper badly but it doesn't at ALL! Definitely going to be a regular stock item for me HAHA!

Okay, so I have an airbrush Demo at work to do. October 17th. If you're in North Vancouver, stop by between 2pm and 4pm and get some airbrush lessons!