Voyage to Venus

The last three years I have made “clever” cards for my other half’s birthday — twist and pop, interactive, and tunnel — but nothing had inspired me for this year. I had a hunt around Pinterest and really nothing was sparking any ideas. So I had to go back to basics.

I’ve had the Lucy Loo Voyage digi for a while — the version I have has a variant with her sat on a mini Journey to the Centre of the Earth type vehicle too — and I fancied colouring her. I just had to come up with a background. I remembered seeing Sandy Allnock create a rocky mountain for a critter to sit on and thought I could try something like that.

Of course, I still needed a bigger scene to set this in and, conveniently, we had just been watching First Spaceship on Venus so I created a simplified version of the poster art for the background.

The hardest part was definitely getting the rocks to look right. It would probably have been easier if I’d found a reference photo to work from but “how hard can it be to create a rock?”… Quite happy with how it turned out though, it just took quite a few layers of colour to get there. I worked on this bit first on the grounds that this was the bit I was most likely to mess up!

The final layer of colour was added with my Polychromos pencils. Mostly adding depth to the shading and a few details like the geysers/vents on the plain in the background.

I do enjoy creating scenes for stamped characters. Whether it’s a simple grassy patch for them to stand on or a full scene like this, it just adds a bit extra something. And it means I can just put it straight on a card base and I don’t have to think about lots of die-cutting and paper layering!

Copic markers:

skin – E00, E21, V20
hair – E33, E57, YR21
clothing – BV20m E41, E43 / E44
purple – V09, V15, V17
black – W5, W7, W9
backpack – N0, N2, N4, N6
rock – YR23, YR27, E37, E29
planet surface – E42, YR21, YR82, V93 / E44, E08, YR18
sky – B97, B39, BV29, C8, 100
spaceship – V93, C5, YR21, C0

Polychromos pencils:

101 white, 175 dark sepia, 250 gold, 108 dark cadmium yellow, 160 manganese violet

Supplies:

• digital stamps:
  The East Wind – Lucy Loo Voyage II
• paper and card:
  Neenah Solar White 216gsm
  Hunkydory Adorable Scorable black