Merry Christmas

I hope that everyone has a very blessed, happy, and peaceful Christmas Day. Thank you all for your visits to my page throughout the year (or however much of it my blog has been up). I wanted to do something a little special, so here is a card of sorts. I have some thoughts regarding the "card" below it, so feel free to stop reading here if you're uninterested. Other than that, once more, Merry Christmas!!

So, this Christmas card… say hello to Drusilla Arenzai of the Cromwell Universe. I'll get into the details of her and her story some other time. However, if you were to ask her, I imagine Drusilla's view of Christmas would be like that of non-Christians who celebrate the holiday. It still holds strong and significant meaning, even though they themselves may not believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior. In principle I don't get into the nitty-gritty of the religious beliefs of my characters, but if I were to classify Drusilla I would say she is likely a non-denominational believer in monotheism; she believes there is likely one God, but doesn't prescribe to any particular organized religious philosophy.

Composition wise, this piece is the most unique one I've shared this year. First off, it's colored, which is something I've only done a couple times. I also was able to add some shading and highlight. But most of all, the medium is all analog. I drew it by hand, and I then used colored pencil. I did crop the original, and had to do some color correcting because of the light-wash during the scanning, but otherwise the image is done entirely by mechanical pencil, pen, and colored pencil.

I drew this picture a while back (like sometime in 2011 I believe). Even so, I hadn't fully decided what the scene would be, what the setting for the picture was or anything like that. As such, I hadn't had a clear idea of what colors I was going for. The dress itself is a mix between that of Euphiemia from Code Geass, and Arachne from Soul Eater, so the likely colors there would have been a mix of pink and black. That would have been a little too much of a gothic Lolita vibe, which just wouldn't suit Drusilla at all, let alone in a Christmas setting.

The color I used for her hair was not the color I intended. It's technically violet blue, but it has too much blue than what I would have liked. Regular violet had too much red in it, so this was the compromise I ended up with. Still too much blue, but not bad, so I might keep it this was for this Drusilla. For the Christmas theme I of course had to use red and green. The design of her dress lent itself well to being able to use the two colors. My only sort of regret there is that I used red for the diamonds on her forearm bands. It made logical sense, but in retrospect it might have been better to use green, or perhaps add in another color like a light blue. Was very happy about the drink in her glass. I think I was able to do a very good job in getting the color mixed right – it is supposed to look like egg nog. I am happiest with the butterfly on the front of her dress. I was able to get the subtle blue of the papilio bianor done much better than I was expecting at first thanks to lots of re-sharpening.

But, as I noted, the scanning left the colors washed out. I've tried a few things to get back closer to the actual colors, which did get the night sky out the window, the reds of the dress and the curtain, and the violet blue of her hair. But the green on the dress and the light blue on the wall still came out too light. It should be a shade or two darker all around, but in trying to do that the rest of the colors end up too dark. I'll have to look again to see if I can fix it up any better, perhaps repost it if I can improve the results.

The background seems a little uninspired now in retrospect. I went with a snow covered tree as seen out a window, but it likely would have been better to go with a decorated green tree and a grander window taking up more of the dead wall space.

At any rate, I'm really happy I was able to do such a nice job with this one. I know it's not completely perfect, but I hope it's nice to look at. And once more, have a very Merry Christmas!!!