SNOWY SKY - B01, Blender Pen

For the steps I used a slightly darker color for the blue sky than I did in my final example becasue it shows up the techniques better. This first step is color the entire sky. Our goal in the end is to have a sky that is darker at the top than near the snow so it's ok not to color all the way to the snow.

Note about the blender pen: In the next step you'll use the blender pen. The blender pen works as a blender on coated cardstocks but behaves more like bleach on uncoated cardstock. In fact, sometimes the lighting effect is a little delayed from when you use the blender, so make one pass and wit a few seconds before determining if you want to lighten more.

Next use the blender pen to blend the white sky with the blue and remove color, more near than the bottom at the top. The mottled effect here will work fine for a snowy sky.

Create snowflakes by holding the blender pen in one spot for a couple seconds. The harder you press the larger the flake, the longer you press the whiter the flake.

Without showing you all the coloring and shading techniques that we already covered in our shading tutorial, I did want to show you how outlining the white in snow covered areas with blue gives the shapes a little depth. I used GB690, which is a little lighter than B701 to add color around the shapes and to any areas of the snow that may be shadowed.

Using a blender pen to soften the edges of the outlines gives a little more realistic look.

Your image is now ready for color!

See the top panel in the finished card? There are footsteps in the snow. Be sure to color those blue. I like a slightly darker blue for stark shadowed areas but generally I use the same blue and just don't touch it with the blender pen like I do the other outlines and shadows so they appear darker.

SNOWY TREE- G676, G679 from the Bottle Green Set, OR827, OY848 from Skintones Set and N920 White

The bottle green seet is great for evergreen trees. I start by using a medium-light green on the entire treeand a light brown on the trunk, then add shading using a darker green under the boughts of teh tree and a darker brown where the tree would cast the darkest shadow on the trunk. I used the lighter brown to blend the trunk a little but this is such a small image I didn't do that on the tree for fear that oversaturation would make the ink bleed. Finally the opaque wuite is added to the edge of the boughs for snow.

COLORED LIGHTS - B707 from Sky Blue set and other basic colors of your choice

Again I used a darker sky color than in the final sample because it's easier to see the effects. These lights are fairly small and I'm showing them at a larger size so youu can see the detail. If you are actually work with larger lights you can do a little more blendign than I was able to in such small scale.

The first step is to color the bulbs in medium colors, the cord in medium gray and the background in medium-dark blue. I used B707.

Next use a blender pen to lighten the base of each bulb where the element would create a lighter spot in the colored glass. Also use a lighter version of each color used for the bulb to draw a glow around each bulb.

The final step softens the glue a little by adding medium blue stripes back through the glow area. It looks a little strange this close up, but if you were actually working on a large image you could blend the glow back into the background more seamlessly and not need to resort to stripes.