Mouse at the lake

I had decided to be a bit more organised this month and not leave the Gerda Steiner progressive challenge until the last few days, so, with the Autumn Scenes mini Copic class still in mind, I thought I would create a scene with the mouse sitting in front of a window with a hillside full of trees visible behind him.

Then I realised that was chickening out of the whole reflection part of the second lesson. I put thoughts of mice to one side and did the full hillside and lake Copic scene.

There were definitely times when I thought it wasn’t going to work, especially once I started on the lake. I just trusted in Sandy’s words, “it looks like a hot mess until it doesn’t”. And it worked. Suddenly the layers of colour started to come together into something that actually looks good.

With that finished, my mind turned to mice again and I came up with the idea of sitting him on a jetty over the edge of the lake.

I created my own planks — just lots of not-perfectly-straight lines of different browns with a quick layer of light brown over the top to blend them a little.

The main thing I did differently with the mouse was to give him a rim light; an orangey glow from the autumn light reflected off the lake behind him (far from realistic, but I just wanted to try the technique).

I fussy cut him out and used some fun foam to pop him up over the lake. There is so much colour on this card that I refrained from adding any extra bling.

Classes:

• Sandy Allnock – Mini Copic Course: Autumn Scenes

Challenges:

• Gerda Steiner Designs progressive challenge – September
• The Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring Challenge

Supplies:

• digital stamps:
  Gerda Steiner Designs – sweet tooth mouse
• pens:
  Gelly Roll – white
• Copic markers:
  mouse – N0, N1, N2, N3, N4, E01, E95
  bowl – BG11, BG13, BG15, BG49, Y21, YR27
  spoon – C00, C3
  rim light – YR12
  planks – E43, E44, E47, E49
  background – a selection of Y, YR, R, E and YG markers
• paper and card:
  Neenah solar white 216gsm
  Hunkydory Adorable Scorable – cotton white
• miscellaneous:
  fun foam