Christmas 2008 Progress

While creating my piece for Christmas 2008, I decided to record my process in making, especially since it's something new I decided to take on. I drew the figure as normal....you know sketched her out(music inspiration: Trans Siberian Orchestra), inked her, erased the sketch lines, colored her in with my usual Crayola colored pencils. I wanted to do something in the background, but I was also a bit worried how the outcome would be still doing it in colored pencil. Also, I really don't like the use of digital graphics on my art, at least not yet anyway since I'm really far from being good at it. That's when I thought of watercolors especially since I have watercolor paper just laying around, haha.

Now, the problem of it being in two pieces. I really didn't want to do that digitally as well(maybe I'm just really opposed to photoshoping?). After completing the background, I decided to actually glue my figure onto the background image, also I wanted to use an old technique utilizing white out to create snow on my piece.

Here are the pictures showing the process of creating my Christmas/Winter piece.

Here is the intial photo. I haven't even started the water colors yet(the paper for it is on the left) and there is my drawing on it's own, but fully done.

Here is the background fully finished(a simple, all blue winter background) and now I've cut out my figure so she's reading to be glued! *Note: I realize that my art is rather hard to cut out now especially since I tend to draw in a rather "whispy" look.

Here is the picture fully glued on to the background. Note that I only used Elmer's Glue to do this. Nothing special. Now to add the snow!

Now cover up anything around that you don't want to have white out covering anything important. Of course, if you have the space(I don't since I live in a small studio apartment) do it in a open area so you don't have to even worry about this.

Prepare your white out. This is the kind I ended up using, though other versions should work just as well. Since white out these days(unfortunately) come with those sponge tips, get a hard bristled paint brush and dip it into the white out. Use the edge of the bottle to flick against the bottle towards your drawing. I personally went from the bottom left corner and flicked upwards toward the upper right corner. After that(and making a mess), you're done!



There the only "tutorial" I'll ever do. :)