Here Be Dragons...Again!

Hello, Tallie here! I'm back today with another Copic scene for you. Just before I start full-tilt on the festive cards, I bring you dragons, with a twinsie to my last card and a totally different background! Featuring the MFT Magical Friends stamp set, it's amazing what different scenes you can come up with, just using the same stamp sets. Can you guess which book/movie inspired this card? :)

I have a relative who absolutely loves Toothless, so I knew he was going to be the main inspiration for this card. I imagined her riding on Toothless, with the scenic village of Berk in the background.

To bring this scene to life, I had to do a little bit of research, finding potential background inspiration photos. I couldn't find one with the exact scene I wanted, so I used several different views to create this one scene.

I started by stamping out the girl riding the dragon in some Lawn Fawn Jellyfish ink onto some blending cardstock as I knew I wanted to do some no-line colouring. I find this works best for scenes like this as the thick black lines detract from the scene. I then lightly pencil sketched the background elements in.

Now for the alcohol markers (I used my Copics)! I would always recommend starting with the background, as you don't want any bleeding from your focal images. I began with the sky, then filled in the vegetation, rocks and finished with the sea. If I were to remake this card, I would switch the colours around so the cooler colours were in the background and the warmer colours were in the foreground. Cooler colours always retreat to the background, enhancing the dimension within the scene. Those browns of the rocks are a little too warm, fighting for focus with the dragon. It's not a big deal here, but would have made the card all that much better!

To merge the sea with the rocks, I used my colourless blender to blur the sea line slightly and simulate that sea mist you often see.

I left the girl and dragon until last, using some dark shadows and light highlights. Once I had finished, I had to go back in and make some portions of the background darker to get the right balance.

A few little finishing touches with my coloured pencils helped to bring the scene to life. You can almost imagine the wind whooshing past!

As with my last card, I used a sentiment from the MFT Birthday Buds stamp set.

Give it a try and see how many different scenes you can create with just one stamp set!