When Side Projects Turn to Client Projects

I am bringing you on my journey of how my illustrations have been getting me some work from clients.

I regularly volunteer at my church and work the computer during the service, putting words on the screen during the songs and making sure the sermon slides are advancing properly. It is very rare that I have to advance the pastor’s slides so I use the time to take notes during the first service and during the second service I draw. Sometimes I draw during both. Most of the time I am drawing something my pastor is talking about.

A few weeks ago Jeremy Steele, one of the pastor’s at my church, was talking about Christmas decorations and from that I started drawing (and listening). I began with a Strathmore watercolor postcard pad.

I thought I would start sharing the tools and products I was using. I started by using a uni pin pen .01 size, black and waterproof and fade proof because I knew I was planning on using watercolor on the piece.

Here is a picture of it.

Then I used a combination of different colors from my Derwent Inktense pencils. I have the 24 pack.

I then added water with a fine detailer water brush by Ranger.

I added some of my water soluble crayons at the end.

From that post of the ornaments, I got a call from one of my favorite clients (and friends) asking for me to do a holiday card for them. So I began the same way as always, first with sketches, then laying a light pencil line down and covering it with the .01 black uni pin pen. You can also see a blue tint on a few areas on this version.

The blue is a watercolor resist pen by Molotow But I have also used a fine line resist pen when doing small details. How it works is like a wax or much like rubber cement. It will not let any color get below the resist and after everything is dry you can easily rub it off.

You can see some detail shots here:

Two projects one a Holiday card and one a craft project for the client. I hope y’all enjoy these behind the scene looks.

Here I used a Stabilo-All Pencil to do the final touches. Once you activate the pencil with water you can create great shadows and intensify the black. I bought a full pack of 12 pencils. But you can purchase just one. Here is the link for the single pencil. Or if you want to be more economical you can buy the pack. Here is the link for the 12-pack.

For the black and the red I used a Large Faber Castell Marker.

I used a white Molotow 2mm round tip/1mm extra fine acrylic paint pen. I have a bunch of these in different sizes and colors. I love how they write. They are very opaque and I love that about them. Then finished the piece by writing North Pole with this paint pen and final touches with the Stabilo-All black pencil.

The links above are my Amazon Affiliate links. Thanks for reading the post and for all the encouragement.

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