Happy holidays! Today I can finally bring you all my completed pictures from the Christmas period for 2019. Over the past month and a bit I have completed 11 Christmas themed pictures from 5 books in my colouring collection.
This year I experimented a bit more with watercolour and acrylic paints for backgrounds. I normally use exclusively pencils, as I am afraid to ruin the paper or opposing image. However, I had pretty good results and it was much quicker.
If you would like to see my Christmas colouring from past years, see my Special Occasions Galleries, which are linked to the original posts.
Romantic Country: A Colouring Book
The Christmas Present is from Eriy’s first Romantic Country: A Colouring Book. It was the last page I coloured and my favourite one in the bunch. I forgot how much I love the paper in these books, so I would like to do a bit more in them, as I have only really done seasonal pictures. I love that the ink is a light grey, which makes it a little easier to disguise the lines. You can see other pages I have coloured in this book from my up-to-do gallery.
For this page, I only used Prismacolour pencils and a white gel pen to cover some of the white lines. It was such a fun and easy one to colour and it was pretty quick because of the paper quality. There are quite a few Christmas themed pictures in Eriy’s series, so I may take a bit more time in these books next year.
Johanna’s Christmas
The following three pictures are from Johanna’s Christmas by Johanna Basford. This gorgeous Christmas themed book is true to Johanna’s intricate inky style and is her only book that is single sided. I actually did a book review of this book last December with completed pictures. So the rest of these ones will be added to my Johanna’s Christmas gallery.
I didn’t realise this first design was a Reindeer Christmas ornament until I was halfway colouring it. I originally had plans to add fireworks or something in the background, but the time I finished filling in the background of the design I decided to leave it. I had used Prismacolor pencils for the main features and a black Tombow brush pen for the rest. I found it quite spongy and blotchy on this paper. So I didn’t want to add anything else to the black on top. I’m happy with the overall colour choice but not so much with the execution.
This next Christmas scene is one of my favourites in this book. It has also had a similar design on the opposing page. This one reminds me of the Night before Christmas. I have seen this one done beautifully by quite a few other colourists. My favourite is by Chris Cheng, which she has done a video tutorial for. This page took me for ages, because I used a lot of soft layers of Prismacolour pencils, particularly for the leaves and background. I also got a bit stumped on colour choices too, so I tried to reuse pencils as I went to make a more cohesive result. The only other addition I used was a bit of white gel pen for sparkle.
The last page I did in this book is this simple Decorated deer head. Although it looks easy it wasn’t a little difficult, as it had a lot of stylised lines in the head, which were hard to disguise with Prismacolor pencil. For the colours, I was inspired by this picture by Ruby Art and this vintage card. The main design is quite small on the page, so I wanted to do a plain background of turquoise. I used some cheap watercolour acrylic paints, I bought a while ago from Eckersley. I mixed Viridian (dark green) with White and a touch of Sap Green. I applied it with a water pen and watered the paint down a lot, which made it easier to apply the paint onto the paper. I did have to do a couple of layers, so it would cover properly. I am quite happy with the result, as I wanted a bit of a textured look. Other than that I used a bit of silver gel pen for the ornaments.
Seasons
The few pages are from Hanna Karlzon’s Seasons. There are quiet a few Christmas themed pictures in the winter section of this book, so I have plenty to come back to next year. I actually had a review lined up for this book which is already coloured and filmed, so look out for that soon.
When I first started this double-page spread I was really enjoying it. I loved the oversized cat and dog and I think I did a pretty good job on the fur. However, once it came time to do the background things went a bit downhill. I first used Winsor & Newton watercolour paints, to add black-grey and purple. It looked pretty terrible so I went over with Prismacolour pencils, as well as gold and white gel pens. The result looks pretty terrible. I’m still getting used to using watercolour so I will have to practise a bit more. I probably would have been better off using acrylic, but at this point I hadn’t tried it yet.
This Tiny decorator also started off pretty well as I envisioned using more pastel colours. I used Prismacolour pencils, which always work well on this paper. I then tried out my Winsor & Newton watercolour paints for a contrasting background. It also came out a little patchy, so I went over with a bit of pencil. This page also had a lot of small stars and spots, so perhaps if I didn’t cover them with so much gel pen it would have looked better.
My last page in this book is my favourite one I completed. It was definitely the most simple of the four but came out looking exactly how I wanted. I used Polychromos pencils, white and gold gel pen and Winsor & Newton watercolour paints. I improved a lot more at the watercolour effect for the background. I will still keep trying until I get better. I forgot to mention that the paper in this book took the watercolour really well and there was minimal to no buckling.
Botanicum
The following two pages are from Maria Trolle’s Botanicum, which I worked on while I was completing a series of pages for a book review I did last month.
I am pretty happy with this Round robin wreath. It took me a long time with Polychromos pencils, but with plenty of soft layers, it gave it plenty of depth. These pencils are easy to sharpen to a sharp point and don’t dull as easily as other brands, so it was much easier to get into the small spaces.
The Kitty-cat Christmas was a relatively quick one for the mediums I used, which included Prismacolor Premier pencils. Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer Watercolor Pencils, Derwent Inkense pencils and a white gel pen. I was surprised that I was able to glide over coloured leaves with a water pen to activate the watercolour background without disturbing the colour.
Sagor Och Sägner
The last page is from Emelie Lidehäll Öberg’s Sagor Och Sägner. You can see my previous book review and up-to-date gallery from this book.
I was a bit intimidated to start this one compared to the others I have worked on this season. I coloured it all with Prismacolour and then switched to black watercolour acrylic paints. I was a bit worried it would stain through to the other page, which is a double-page spread I would really like to do, but it didn’t at all. To apply the paint, I watered it down quite a lot and applied it with a water pen. This helped get it down a lot smoother, as it was quite dry. It took a couple of lays to get a nearly mat finish. I then used a fine line Posca pen to add the white strings, etc. I did have to keep cleaning my Posca pen that was becoming grey, but other than that it went over the black paint quite well and didn’t fade.
Live Eat Colour 