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Description
I know I'm a few days late, but I've been busy with family and swatching and life in general. Still, better late than never, no?

I can't say I'm normally one to do holiday-specific art pieces, but it felt like the thing to do this year, in combination with wanting to get back into making more personal pieces and borrowing inspiration from an old friend of mine who also had a female Nutcracker-inspired character that I fell in love with. But I really did want to take that concept and do my own thing with it, and I think I've done that successfully here. Oh, and I think a little inspiration from "Shatter Me" by Lindsey Stirling snuck in there also .

Also, does anyone else from the states really miss the good ol' days of grade school where around holidays like Christmas and Easter you'd take precious class time to make special holiday ornaments/decorations? I was also channeling that sort of feeling with this.

My original plan was to transfer the sketch directly onto the black paper and color it using these metallic eco-pencils by Faber Castell that I picked up from Books-A-Million, but I very quickly realized that wasn't going to work because apparently light boxes don't work with black paper. And I honestly can't tell if I should feel silly for not automatically coming to that conclusion on my own. The second plothole in that story came with the swatching of those 12 little pencils revealing that while they might make for okay accents, they really aren't enough on their own to be the entire source of color.

So plan-B quickly became to ink the sketch and then color that in and go from there. I also considered transferring onto my toned-gray paper, but then I realized I could cut the colored figure out and still go with the snow globe backing I had in mind on the black paper, and I'm not comfortable with cutting up the toned paper.

Then I had to address the matter of what I would color everything in with. I toyed with the idea of doubling this as my test piece for my Faber Castell Polychromos, but considering I've otherwise switched to mostly using galaxy and sky drawings as the test images for colored pencil sets, on some level it didn't really seem fair. And the more I thought about it, the more I just didn't feel like using colored pencils as the main coloring tool at all. I like the look they give, by colored pencils take time and this particular drawing has some fine but simple details that I feel like my colored pencil skills don't really do justice. And thus the decision was made to use my small collection of various alcohol markers to get the job done and accent with some gel pens. (Though I did take a few minutes to swatch several different pens, my metallic Sharpies and some metallic pencils to figure out what to use for the accents too).

I did sketch the snow globe out before I went on to coloring, but right from the start I had pictured mainly using a white colored pencil to get the look I wanted. After I colored in the Nutcracker, I went back and at the very top of the back of the black page tested a few supplies to start planning out the globe in more detail. And I also ended up taking a quick picture of one of my actual snow globes to get an idea of how the shiny marks should look. I ended up outlining and detailing the globe in gel pens, then doing some minimal coloring and shading with colored pencil. The finishing touch was a few white sequins for the snowy stuff, in addition to more gel pen.

As for the design of the Nutcracker herself, I went with what came across to me as "generic Christmas Nutcracker" if you converted that into ballerina-wear. Though things like the shape and detail of the hat, jacket, and the shield and spear I did take some creative liberties with since there seem to be dozens of variations all around for the design of nutcrackers as a whole. I did go with what was originally supposed to be white-blonde hair that ended up not looking so much like that because I got carried away with the shading because I noticed most nutcrackers in the pictures I saw had fluffy white hair, but just plain white didn't feel like it would balance out with the rest of the design to me. I also included the white ruffled collar as a nod to the traditional fluffy white beards. And the spear is both festive by having the blade look like holly, but would also be functionally sharp. . Her dress/skirt was meant to be that kind of white that's so white it looks kind of blue in the shadows, though I think I might have gotten a little carried away with the shading there, too.

And as someone that does not spend a lot of time drawing weaponry or shields, I fully realize that the shield here is probably entirely too small to do any good and the way I've drawn the holly spear is probably way more decorative than practical, but the point was to draw things that looked pretty and stuck with the theme, not to design them for practical use. And to be fair, she is technically supposed to be a beautiful knickknack, so...

Then when all was said and done I mounted the black paper on some new metallic card stock, just for a little extra ambiance. Though I did end up having to take a picture of the drawing when after three different scans it became apparant that was going to be the only way to capture some of the glittery details so that everything looked reasonable. (So if that quality's a little funky, that's why).

I am overall really happy with how it came out and I think it was worth being a few days late. Not sure if this is a character I'll draw again or regularly, but it could happen.

Next up is probably going to be my test piece for the Polychromos, and then I've got a couple of ideas but nothing concrete just yet. We'll see.

Also, I promise I'm paying attention to my correspondence, I just really have not had the mental energy to address it properly.

Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings

Where to find me & my artwork:
My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

Description
I know I'm a few days late, but I've been busy with family and swatching and life in general. Still, better late than never, no?

I can't say I'm normally one to do holiday-specific art pieces, but it felt like the thing to do this year, in combination with wanting to get back into making more personal pieces and borrowing inspiration from an old friend of mine who also had a female Nutcracker-inspired character that I fell in love with. But I really did want to take that concept and do my own thing with it, and I think I've done that successfully here. Oh, and I think a little inspiration from "Shatter Me" by Lindsey Stirling snuck in there also .

Also, does anyone else from the states really miss the good ol' days of grade school where around holidays like Christmas and Easter you'd take precious class time to make special holiday ornaments/decorations? I was also channeling that sort of feeling with this.

My original plan was to transfer the sketch directly onto the black paper and color it using these metallic eco-pencils by Faber Castell that I picked up from Books-A-Million, but I very quickly realized that wasn't going to work because apparently light boxes don't work with black paper. And I honestly can't tell if I should feel silly for not automatically coming to that conclusion on my own. The second plothole in that story came with the swatching of those 12 little pencils revealing that while they might make for okay accents, they really aren't enough on their own to be the entire source of color.

So plan-B quickly became to ink the sketch and then color that in and go from there. I also considered transferring onto my toned-gray paper, but then I realized I could cut the colored figure out and still go with the snow globe backing I had in mind on the black paper, and I'm not comfortable with cutting up the toned paper.

Then I had to address the matter of what I would color everything in with. I toyed with the idea of doubling this as my test piece for my Faber Castell Polychromos, but considering I've otherwise switched to mostly using galaxy and sky drawings as the test images for colored pencil sets, on some level it didn't really seem fair. And the more I thought about it, the more I just didn't feel like using colored pencils as the main coloring tool at all. I like the look they give, by colored pencils take time and this particular drawing has some fine but simple details that I feel like my colored pencil skills don't really do justice. And thus the decision was made to use my small collection of various alcohol markers to get the job done and accent with some gel pens. (Though I did take a few minutes to swatch several different pens, my metallic Sharpies and some metallic pencils to figure out what to use for the accents too).

I did sketch the snow globe out before I went on to coloring, but right from the start I had pictured mainly using a white colored pencil to get the look I wanted. After I colored in the Nutcracker, I went back and at the very top of the back of the black page tested a few supplies to start planning out the globe in more detail. And I also ended up taking a quick picture of one of my actual snow globes to get an idea of how the shiny marks should look. I ended up outlining and detailing the globe in gel pens, then doing some minimal coloring and shading with colored pencil. The finishing touch was a few white sequins for the snowy stuff, in addition to more gel pen.

As for the design of the Nutcracker herself, I went with what came across to me as "generic Christmas Nutcracker" if you converted that into ballerina-wear. Though things like the shape and detail of the hat, jacket, and the shield and spear I did take some creative liberties with since there seem to be dozens of variations all around for the design of nutcrackers as a whole. I did go with what was originally supposed to be white-blonde hair that ended up not looking so much like that because I got carried away with the shading because I noticed most nutcrackers in the pictures I saw had fluffy white hair, but just plain white didn't feel like it would balance out with the rest of the design to me. I also included the white ruffled collar as a nod to the traditional fluffy white beards. And the spear is both festive by having the blade look like holly, but would also be functionally sharp. . Her dress/skirt was meant to be that kind of white that's so white it looks kind of blue in the shadows, though I think I might have gotten a little carried away with the shading there, too.

And as someone that does not spend a lot of time drawing weaponry or shields, I fully realize that the shield here is probably entirely too small to do any good and the way I've drawn the holly spear is probably way more decorative than practical, but the point was to draw things that looked pretty and stuck with the theme, not to design them for practical use. And to be fair, she is technically supposed to be a beautiful knickknack, so...

Then when all was said and done I mounted the black paper on some new metallic card stock, just for a little extra ambiance. Though I did end up having to take a picture of the drawing when after three different scans it became apparant that was going to be the only way to capture some of the glittery details so that everything looked reasonable. (So if that quality's a little funky, that's why).

I am overall really happy with how it came out and I think it was worth being a few days late. Not sure if this is a character I'll draw again or regularly, but it could happen.

Next up is probably going to be my test piece for the Polychromos, and then I've got a couple of ideas but nothing concrete just yet. We'll see.

Also, I promise I'm paying attention to my correspondence, I just really have not had the mental energy to address it properly.

Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings

Where to find me & my artwork:
My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram