My mother always chooses the theme and style for our Christmas cards, and this year she wanted something like my Snow White pieces, which was quite a departure from last year's cards.
I originally started out a little bit more pagan and Germanic, with a couple gathering holly and ivy and bringing home a fir tree:
But then I suddenly changed my mind. I thought there was a bit too much going on in there for a small Christmas card – it's a concept probably better suited to a full-size illustration.
So I came up with three more concepts:
We chose the first and third concept. I have always done two Christmas card designs each year, and now that we get them printed at Moo I like to take advantage of the printfinity option as well.
The first concept was inspired by the festival of Saint Lucia, with a crown of candles, and the third features carol singing and mulled wine. Originally the dogs were brown and white, but by popular demand I changed them to the same colours as my cavoodle Myrna.
I worked on each card at about A4 size, first printing out my rough and using layout paper to draw directly on top of it with pencil:
And then transferring it directly to watercolour paper with technical pens, using a lightbox.
Here are some of the shots I tweeted while the paintings were in progress:
And then I sent them off for printing at Moo, along with two of the other sets of cards I've designed. When they arrived I used embossing powder to emboss the circular frames with gold:
I think they came out rather nicely!
Moleskine watercolour paper with Winsor & Newton watercolours and Copic Multiliners. Embellishments added with a Perfect Medium pen and gold embossing powder (and a heat gun)
I hope you like them!
I wish everyone a very happy festive season and a fabulous year to come!
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