Christmas Cards: Ester & Korra

Remember these Christmas cards from last year? This year Ester the Finnish Lapphund is back, with her sister Korra. The friends I did the cards for last year were very pleased with how the cards turned out, and with how everyone was amazed at their finding cards with a dog that looked exactly like Ester (that's what I like, happy clients!) and asked me to do something similar this year.

Since last Christmas they've acquired Korra, another Finnish Lapphund, so this year the cards naturally had to feature them both. Like all puppies, they can be little terrors, so I wanted the cards to reflect that with playful images, not unrealistic images of beautifully behaved dogs. I came up with some rough concepts, and they picked this one immediately:

None of the other initial concepts really did it for them, so I came up with some more, and they settled on this one as a companion card:

I wanted to use the same style as last year, and Korra has a gorgeous sable coat, which was interesting to ink. I used Manga Studio 5 for the inking, as I like the pen tool in that for this sort of work better than the brushes in Photoshop. Then I moved the cards into Photoshop for colouring, because I like the brushes in Photoshop better for that, and organised the type in Illustrator.

Here are some details of the gorgeous dogs:

There's something very crisp about the linework in Manga Studio that I like for this type of work – I don't want it to look to over-worked, but I don't want it to look too soft, either. 

We got the cards printed at Moo.com, and they did a lovely job, as always:

Reference photos were provided, of course, and the images were tweaked after I was done, to make sure that both dogs looked as accurate as possible. 

Manga Studio 5, Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, Wacom Intuos 5

Sketch: What I Wore

Stalled a bit coming up with solutions for a job I'm doing, and so changed tack and took some time out to whip up this quick What I Wore Today sketch in Manga Studio:

That's my dog Myrna. I realised too late that I should have worn a red belt and then we would have completely matched!

In other news, I am now on Twitter. You can find me at @AleneArt or via the sidebar of this blog. I'll be posting more rough sketches and sneak peeks over there than I do on the blog. 

Doggy Christmas Cards

Here are some Christmas cards I did for some friends, showing their new dog Ester, who is a finnish lapphund. I'm told lots of people were impressed – first by their finding a card with a dog that looked exactly like Ester, but then by having personalised cards, so I'm glad they went down well!

I had reference photos to work from, which I tweaked to suit the two concepts. Ester loves to dig, so a digging card seemed fitting, and her name means 'star', so I chose to do a star headpiece instead of the more usual (and overdone) Father Christmas hat. 

We got them printed at moo.com, and they came out very nicely as usual, with nice rich colours.  

I did the linework and a bit of the colouring in Manga Studio 5, the text in Adobe Illustrator CC, and the rest of the colouring and the final touches in Adobe Photoshop CC – with a Wacom Intuos 3.