Spring bunnies

Another month, another challenge image from Gerda Steiner. And, thanks to the Daily Marker challenge, I have actually completed my entry in the first half of the month for a change. This time we had a cute pair of bunnies to work with.

I always like to take the “challenge” idea to heart and actually challenge myself to create something new each time. It would be easy to keep making similar layouts, but then the only reason to do it would be to get the next month’s image…

So, for these bunnies, I was inspired to create a simple spring scene. I remembered I had an Easter stamp set from Lawn Fawn and, after performing stamp surgery on the row of tulips in it, I used that to add some extra flowers and Easter eggs.

I started colouring with the top half of the background. I sketched the hill line in my lightest green and then coloured the sky. I used a piece of linen and some colourless blender refill to add texture; the texture isn’t very obvious on the super-light blue sky, but it does help to smooth out any unevenness in the colouring.

My plan was to have the setting go from a relatively muted smooth green in the distant hills, gradually getting brighter and adding more texture until it reached the grass in the foreground. I covered the whole of the background with a smooth blend of greens, leaving adding the texture until after I’d coloured everything else.

I worked really hard to keep the colouring of the bunnies light — I normally go for a lot more contrast in the shading — and used stippling rather than flicking to create the fur texture for a change.

I simplified the palette for the flowers and eggs, using just red, orange and blue to maintain a balance across the card.

Then I created the grass. Three different greens, with big flicks for the grass in front of the bunnies, gradually getting smaller until there were just tiny dots fading into the distance.

After putting all that work into the colouring I didn’t feel the need to get fussy with the card layout. So I simply trimmed a little off the top and bottom to leave a small strip of the card base showing.

And that’s the first Easter card of the year complete.

Challenges:

• Gerda Steiner Designs progressive challenge – February 2018
• The Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring Challenge

Copic markers:

grey bunny – W00, W0, W1, W3, E95
brown bunny – E30, E31, E35, E95
orange – Y38, YR16, YR09
red – R24, R27, R39
blue – B01, B02, B04
leaves – G09, G29
grass – YG03, YG25, YG17
hills – G40, YG0000, YG00, YG01
sky – B0000
shadow – N3, N4, N5

Supplies:

• stamps:
  Lawn Fawn – happy Easter
• digital stamps:
  Gerda Steiner – spring bunny friends
• paper and card:
  Neenah solar white 216gsm
  Hunkydory Adorable Scorable cotton white
• miscellaneous:
  Copic – various ink – 0
  scrap of linen

This image was coloured on 8th February 2018; day 25 of The Daily Marker 30 Day Colouring Challenge