Blank: Sketched space bears

Inspiration can come from a lot of different places, in this case it was as simple as someone saying “you should use those on a card”. The black and white shading maps combined with the space theme immediately suggested a monochrome card and also provided the perfect opportunity to use my new Altenew moon stamps.

Inspired by:

When I posted my coloured bears and the shading maps on Instagram, Ruth (craftingwhilethebabynaps) suggested that the shading maps deserved their own card.

How:

I fussy cut out the bears and ran a black pen around the cut edge. The moon was stamped using Distress inks. There’s a reason Distress inks are mostly used for techniques rather than straight stamping and that’s because it’s almost impossible to get a smooth finish, but when you’re stamping a moon, a little extra texture is not a problem.

The asteroid (or whatever planetary body it is the bears are on) was drawn by hand using Copic multiliners. I used my light box to trace the shape onto some masking paper and masked off the asteroid while I blended some black soot ink over the vast void of space.

I added some fine dots over the ground to give it a bit of texture and then realised that I’d managed to smudge some of the dots… So, although I had originally intended to leave the ground white, I ended up doing some more ink blending over it, which smudged the dots even more, but that just added to the final texture.

I glued the moon in place and popped the bears up on some thin foam tape. I shaved a bit of the foam from behind the sitting bear’s feet so that he didn’t look like he was floating over the crater-thingy.

That was when I remembered that I had planned to do some spatter stars over the black and had to draw them individually instead. When adding “random” dots onto a project, there is always a danger of falling into a pattern and ending up with something that doesn’t look at all random. To avoid that happening I tried a different method with this card: I dotted small constellations randomly across space and then filled in the gaps with individual dots. That way you get a good spread of clumps and empty space and avoid creating a discernible pattern.

I am so happy that Ruth suggested doing this, and I am really pleased with the result.

Class:

Copic Jumpstart class

Supplies:

• stamps:
  Mama Elephant – space bears
  Altenew – to the moon
• Distress ink pads:
  moon – pumice stone, hickory smoke, black soot
  space – black soot
  ground – pumice stone
• pens:
  Copic multiliner – 0.3 and 0.5
  Artline – multipen – 1.0 – white
• paper and card:
  Bristol Strathmore 300
  Hunkydory – adorable scorable
• miscellaneous:
  Inkadinkadoo masking paper