A couple of weeks ago I was headed to the library with my 3 year old thinking about what stamp I wanted to do next and I thought about doing a penguin with a heart snowman. When I got there a children’s nature magazine jumped off the shelf at me because of the penguin feature. When I flipped to the article there was a penguin in this pose and I thought, there THAT is my next stamp.

So I borrowed a pencil from the librarian and sketched his pose then re-drew it with my Wacom tablet later when my daughter was napping. Ephesians 3:8 immediately came to mind as the perfect verse. I think this stamp would be great for Valentines day, Easter, encouragement, or a simple I love you.

The blue snow and brown hounds-tooth papers are Basic Grey and the white embossed swirly paper was sold by the sheet at Michaels. I bought it for my Hawaii album and will have to go grab a few more sheets.

Coloring this stamp was more of a challenge for me than drawing it! Black and white subjects like Penguins and snow are not the easiest thing to master. I printed the stamp 4 up and played with each element until I achieved a look I was happy with then brought it all together in the final illustration. I used Copics and only have one “000? color, so everything was too saturated and too hard to blend out to white. So, I used a technique I learned from Marianne in my Copic certification class. I have a water brush filled with Copic’s blending solution and I used sort of a water color technique, blending my colors on a Ranger craft mat. This is how I did the hearts, wind, sky, rocks and snow.

For the penguin I used all 5 grey markers. On the wings I “flicked” feather like strokes starting with the lightest grey and working my way up going darker as I went. Then I colored black onto my Ranger mat and used the blender solution water brush to dilute it. I was pleased with the feathery edge that it produced as long as I kept my brush as dry as possible while still loaded with color.

The wind is accented with Adirondack Pearl paint and I swirled stickles on the heart snowman. Finally, I distressed the edge of all the layers with Tim Holtz’s Old Paper Distress Ink. Then I used his Black soot on the very edges so that the black from the drawing was carried through.

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