Ok, so it’s still a few days to go, but I had to share the Christmas tree from Johanna’s Christmas – I stuck with some basic shading with colouring pencils for the tree itself, and fineliners for the rest to make it stand out.
I didn’t add any metallic detail into these, as the deep colours I used on the baubles meant the lighter colours stand out really well on their own.
Sticking with the Johanna’s Christmas book, this one was actually printed off from the Staedtler website for their #mycreativeescape competition.
I used Staedtler fineliners (of course) for most of the image, but the shading needed something a little less harsh, so I dug out my Derwent Coloursoft pencils to give the snow, polar bear and ice some depth.
I’m not all that confident at knowing how to place shadow, but I’m quite pleased with how the polar bear came out.
I wasn’t able to find a copy of Johanna Basford’s Johanna’s Christmas in town, but I was able to order it from Amazon at a great price (£5 instead of £12.99), but that did give the disadvantage of not knowing what the book would be like until it arrived.
The pages are quite thick, with 37 one-sided images to colour (the reverse side of each image has a generic Christmassy pattern, which can also be coloured if you feel so inclined). The pages are also perforated, so you can remove them from the book once they’re coloured – or even remove them to use paints without the risk of getting paints or water over the other pages.
I used Staedtler fineline pens and a couple of metallic gel pens from Paperchase just to liven things up a little. I’m not sure if the background needs some colouring pencil shading or not….