Every year, my mom & I send an extra donation to Northeast Animal Shelter, a no-kill shelter in Salem, Massachusetts that we support. I like to include a card with the check, just for a little added surprise for them. This year, image-wise, I really went all out! I came up with the theme of "Peace on Earth," and combined animals who are generally not considered to be "friends" all in one scene. I struggled with the placement of the greeting, since I couldn't seem to get it to "fit" anywhere. Finally I thought of putting it on a sign. So I "apportioned" the sign from Bugaboo Stamps' "Snowball Penguins," and typed my greeting onto that in Photoshop, using the "Kalam" font. I also had to copy a section of the tree trunk & paste it at the the bottom, then elongate it with the "Content-Aware Scale" tool in Photoshop, so I had a full-height trunk. After I'd placed all my images (adding the "Santa Hat" image to the puppy), I printed the composite scene onto a piece of watercolor paper. I actually forgot to erase the little snowflakes & doodles that are part of the "Winter Bird Trio" image, so I just added more of my own with a fine-tip black pen to the rest of the sky after I printed the image.
I colored the images with Inktense pencils. I used a damp paintbrush to pick up the color from the pencils and apply it to the paper. This gives me the maximum control over shading & color intensity. You can even get really pale shades using these pencils like this. I made the mistake of not looking at an image when I colored the Rottweiler puppy, and did the colors "backwards." At first, I was just going to let it go, but decided against that, and went over the coloring with 2 Prismacolor pencils, to put the black & brown in the RIGHT parts! Thankfully, the pencil covered the Inktense coloring quite well--whew! I added Liquid Applique to the trim on the Santa hats for the dog & cat, and for snow accents. I let that dry, then puffed it up with my heat tool. I also added Christmas Red Stickles to the tree ornaments, and Diamond Stickles to the star. Finally, I matted the panel with blue, and adhered it to a white card base.
Date: Monday, December 17, 2018 GMT Views: 360
Favorited:2