Unlocking Christmas 2017 (Partially)

Got asked who was who in the 2017 Christmas card, and took a booking 2019! Here's part of the image. I lost the list that identified many, but here are the people I work with section identified.

1. Lou R
2. Jo S
3. Tom G
4. Nick B
5. Tobie L
6. Jon D
7. Ed P
8. Jo D
9. Scarlett, Sofie and Arran.

Christmas 2018

After much head scratching, this was the Christmas card for 2018. It's our new cat flying out with the presents. Picture was drawn with Derwent Intense Pencils, plus a little help from Photoshop. Photoshop added a couple of shadows and added the white lines which had disappeared when I got the paper too wet.

Inktense

Probably my favourite watercolour pencils. Not joking. I've tried a number of different sets of watercolour pencils - and I always come back to these. Three reasons: controllability, the strength of colour when wetted and the permanence when dry. I first discovered these a few years ago, but until now I've never had a set as large as this. The wooden case is a nice way to store them and a real plus.
When I'm using these I like to do an outline first. Normally I use the Indigo pencil, sketching lightly as I don't want to drive the colour into the paper at this point. Incidentally, I use Derwent's watercolour paper,  as it has a particularly smooth surface. Then, using a bush I hydrate the lines I want and bring them out to a wash if required. Finally I rub out with a regular eraser all the lines I don't want. As long as the paper is very dry, I leave it overnight usually, this works pretty well.
Then because the wetted pencil is dry and therefore permanent I add the other colours as required. One thing I do is check the colours, both by themselves and as over colour; Inktense pencil colours are a lot brighter and often slightly different to what you might expect so it pays to test somewhere. If you look at the sample picture you can see where I've done this along the lefthand edge.

After that, I use them like waterproof inks. Shade the areas I want to colour, use a water brush to stroke out the colour, let it dry and apply more as required. The image attached to this review is a section of one I did for a Christmas card this year and other than a few black lines done with a Derwent fine liner is all inktense pencils. I should note that this had further work done after this scan; but I think it shows the versatility and colour you can expect.
If I have one niggle, it's that the pencil is quite soft and doesn't hold a point for very long. I can work with that, but it would be nice to see these available in a mechanical pencil one day.  Until then, I'm very happy with my 48!

Colouring nearly done.

Four hours gone and I have painted the rocks and 245 carrot noses. There's still some pencil shading to be done and a look by the cool light of day for bits I've missed. The major elements to be done are a sky; which I'll paint separately and drop in, and I will hue shift the brown mountains to an indigo blue colour.

Right now I could go on all night, but common sense says "Quit while you're ahead"

Ink and colour tests.

Tried a number of different blues/pens. None of them gave exactly what I was looking for - a waterproof blue. Also tried pencils but not happy with finish. Considered drawing in brown then doing a hue shift. But that would rule out paint. However I have done a hue shift in another posting.

Us. Including cat.

Of course we're here. Although Ruth looks like she's got a beard. That will need to be fixed in post production.

This isn't the finished version, just a quick fix. You can see the hue shift working for the background. The brown has been changed to blue. I thought this worked rather well. 

Christmas cards cometh...

That's nearly all the drawing down. Quicker than last year, only two days down there at the moment, but the colour and digital work still to come.

This is just a bit.