Designing Christmas Cards

For my Christmas card designs this year I wanted to keep things simple.  I decided to make a pack of four cards with two designs using red and white and two using green and white.  The colour limitation really helps me to focus and means I won't get too carried away.

Below you can watch the process video for my Winter Warmers card.  As you may notice I begin with a very loose outline and build the detail as I go.  This was drawn on Procreate on an Ipad.  It's a process I'm new to as I usually do all my drawing on paper first but this saves a lot of tidying.  I won't be switching to full digital drawing anytime soon though.

I had a lot of fun designing knitwear patterns for the mug and on the other cards.  

You can purchase a pack here.

And here is the full set.

Wintry Woods jotter design

 I've recently added some A5 jotters to my shop. They weren't supposed to Christmassy but it's been pretty chilly here for a long time so I was feeling wintry, and really I'd like nothing more that a snowy mountain cabin to myself.

Click here to go to the shop.  

Here's a time lapse video of my cover design.

I did an initial sketch in my sketchbook and then drew straight on to Procreate.  I love how you can watch all the decisions you made.  I'm really happy with the way they turned out.  There's even a cute little 'This book belongs to' on the inside cover, and they're blank so you can sketch or write.  

Flawed

I've been painting up some of my #illo_advent drawings lately.  It's amazing to see the ones which work on a larger scale and the ones that don't.  Or is it because I'm not used to painting so my efforts are still hit and miss?

Each colour layer is painted separately in black gouache, scanned and coloured digitally.  I like using a traditional medium because of the unexpected marks and mistakes it creates.  Flaws.  I like flaws.  When I work digitally I always end up tidying too much.  This is a way for me to loosen up.  

If you happen to be frustrated by your process and want to loosen it up too I suggest playing with a new medium for a bit.  Recently I've been enjoying crayons and felt tip pens in limited colours.  I haven't found a way to incorporate them into my work yet but I've learned to enjoy the lack of control and enjoy the flaws.

Advent

Those lovely people in twitter are at it again.  This time they're drawing daily advents and there are many to choose from.  Here's my December 2nd which I particularly like.  I may have peaked already.

Penguins

Apologies for the absence but I've been in the midst of moving from the sunny south of England to the cold, cold north of Scotland.
This is perhaps why all of my work of late is ice related.

These are some penguin prints I've been working on.

Practice makes perfect

The original

Another print i've been working on…

On the ice

Printing in progress

The original sketch

These, and others, are on sale here http://www.littlecarouselgallery.com/#!meg-mclaren/cvx2 

as are many other beautiful works by other artist.

In the meantime i'm off to dig out the mittens.