Hello! I’m back with my bi-weekly post over on the Seven Hills Crafts blog and today I have another Copic dragon 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? 🙂
Magical Dragon Scene Birthday Card Tutorial
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 Berk in the background, dragon all around.
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.
Firstly, I started by stamping out the girl riding the dragon in some Lawn Fawn Jellyfish ink onto some blending cardstock (my current favourite is from Heffy Doodle) 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.
Supplies
Please see below for information on the supplies used in this post. Please note, affiliate links* are used at no cost to you!
- My Favorite Things Birthday Buds stamps (Seven Hills Crafts, Simon Says Stamp*)
- My Favorite Things Magical Friends stamps (Seven Hills Crafts, Simon Says Stamp*)
- Heffy Doodle Alcohol Marker Friendly Cardstock (Heffy Doodle, Simon Says Stamp*)
- Lawn Fawn Jellyfish Ink (Seven Hills Crafts, Simon Says Stamp*)