Penguin and Snowman birthday card

Happy 2018 Precious People!

Believe it or not, this is not a Christmas card, but a birthday card for my son-in-law, whose birthday is on Boxing Day.  He is very appreciative of my art, and is an artist himself, so, I decided to do a card for him that he could actually frame if he wanted to; thus, it is a one layer card with no add-ons; it's just images and colour!

I used my Winter Scene in combination with an image that was available for one of Kit And Clowder's colouring classes (a website dedicated to teaching colouring of digital images!)  It is a redux of an older digital image from a few years ago, Snowman and Penguins. 

I coloured the image with mixed media - Copics, Coloured Pencil and a white gel pen for the snowflakes on Snowman's hat.  After laying down a layer of Copics, I went over parts of it with Prismacolour Pencils.  The parts I put a pencil layer on were the snow in the foreground, the snow on the tree on the right, the penguin whites parts, the snowman white parts, the snowman's hat and scarf, and the two blue/green hats and scarf, and the ear muffs.  Other than those parts, the sky, the distant hills and the snow on the trees on the left, as well as the striped scarf, are just Copics.  The reason for adding the coloured pencils are several: I feel I have a slight advantage with coloured pencils in that I can control where the colour goes, and control the blend a lot easier.  Also, if you use some of the medium or dark shades of Copics, like I had, the paper tends to get saturated quickly, and so it becomes impossible to deepen some of the shadows without getting ink pooling on the surface.  Switching to coloured pencil at that point gives me the option of deepening shadows successfully.  I was happy with the sky and the distant hills and the mid ground trees, and that is why they didn't get any added coloured pencils on top. 

This type of colouring is very time consuming, and so it is not a type of project that one can do for every card, if you tend to want to make a lot of cards.  But it is very rewarding to see the end results!

Here is a list of the colours used: 

Copics: 

Sky: Y0000, BG90, B14, 91, W0, C1, 0 Blender

Ground and Snowman: Y0000, BG70, B60, BG000, B32, 41, BV23

Snowman's scarf and hat: E21, 23, 25, 29, 49, R56, RV17, 14, and the white gel pen for the snowflake design

Blue/green hat, scarf and mitt on L penguin: BG11, 23, 72, 75, B14

Green hat top R penguin: G40, 43, 46, B14

Hood on penguin: E53, 55, 57, RV17

Fur Trim: W1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Green Mitt: YG25, G40, 43, 46

Feet and beaks: YR61, E95, 97, 99

Penguin White: YR30, BV20, 0000, 000, 23

Penguin Black: N0, 1, 5, 10, Y0000

Branch arms: E21, 08, 19

Prismacolour pencils used to enhance the underlay of Copics: 

929, 928, 994, 1078, 914, 927, 938, 1006, 105, 1027, 943, 1079, 912, 992, 920, 907, 103, 1024, 1103, 1086, 1087