Wednesday WrapUp Holiday Postcards

Welcome!

I’ve enjoyed providing each week a “Wednesday Warm Up,”— a day of usually quick drawing, inking, brushing as warm up to our serious art. I’ve been sharing a strategy to try each Wednesday using the iPad app ProCreate. I’ve decided to change it up a bit for a few Wednesday Wrap Up— a wrap up of my project tips for the past week or something I’ve learned that may also help others with the same #warmup4art hashtag.

Holiday Art Prompts

As a break from my review of the NaNoWriMo art, I’ve begun daily art from various prompts with my CLmooc friends. Each day we choose one from our several lists:

We post in a private FB group, but I also post mine on Instagram [42Sheri]. Please join in with the hashtag of one of the prompts and add #clmooc as well. You’ll find poetry and photography [ #silentsunday ] posts there as well. Welcome!

My Inspiration

Each holiday illustration I create is inspired by the classes I take on YouTube or Skillshare. Many of them include the strategies I learned from Jennifer Nichols, which you can see and choose to learn from at:

An example is the snow globe at the top of this post. I followed her instagram tutorial, and you can too here: Snow Globe How To . I adapted it to a snow globe sitting on a table. If you join her newsletter, you’ll receive access to her Procreate brush library. In the background of the image above and on the table, you’ll see two of her pattern brushes.

Each illustration is an application of learning from so many, but today, I share these two: Jennifer and Liz.

In this replay you can see all the decisions I made and the parts of Jennifer’s tutorial that helped me to succeed. The tree in the video is from a brush set by Liz Kohler Brown from her Skillshare class Winter Illustrations. She is another artist from whom I learn so much.

What to do with Holiday Doodles?

With thirty-one days in December, the library of illustrations will grow to a collection– but what will you do with them?

I decided to use my holiday images as post cards. But since my images are usually square, I created as one of my illustrations for prompts a pattern for holly– which I could piece together into a rectangle for a postcard template. To learn how to create a pattern, see the Spoonflower blog post featuring Jennifer Nichols who explains exactly how to create a pattern in Procreate: How To Create a Seamless Repeat in Procreate. You can do this!

Like this:

I simply added a layer for “add image” and use this as a template I can duplicate to insert another square image from my month of December doodles.

Resources for Postcards

To create the Postcards, I use Pages on my Mac, but you can use any Word Processing program, and Avery has templates for you to use easily, for free. I order their postcards No. 8387 to print out and send for the holidays.

The results:

This is what my Pages template looks like with the postcards:

Download a PDF of the postcards for personal use:

postcholliday42Sheri Download

Try It

So, that wraps up this Wednesday Wrap Up. With a collection of art work from a month of prompts, one idea is to mail post cards to your friends and family with your artwork. Just create a template with one of your patterns, and insert the square images– or make oval displays, whatever fits your art and willingness to share!

So, with whatever skills you’re learning, with the digital art portfolio growing, I hope you find a way to give joy to others by sharing your work.

I look forward to your sharing, and please continue to be a part of the #warmup4art series to learn and enjoy our work together! See my sharing at IG @42Sheri and Twitter @42Sheri.