Watch Me Tackle a Polar Bear Greeting Card

Want to see how I handled the edition of my new Weekly Challenge for 2024? I created a polar bear greeting card! Check out my video here, or read below for the step by step.

First I used my iPad and it's symmetry tools to create a rough sketch of the bears and some design elements for the final card. I don't like to leave *everything* symmetrical, which gives you a nice hand-made quality in the finished product. You could do the same sketching with pencil and paper, but another bonus here for me is I was able to then use my iPad as a light table! I used the brightest setting on my iPad, and then was able to transfer my design to watercolor paper.

If you're new to my list, you might not have seen one of my favorite all time watercolor tools: a water brush! You can buy these pretty much anywhere that sells art supplies. Basically you fill the base with water, and then can use it with marker pigment, India ink, or watercolors for all sorts of cool brush pen effects. For my polar bear greeting card I used a mix of Speedball India ink and Pelikan ink with my water brush!

Finally, I scanned in my ink wash card and did a fair bit of Photoshop editing. When I tell students that I finish pretty much any piece of artwork in Photoshop, this is what I mean. I can fix ink blotches, create more negative space, or even make sure the background bleeds out to my intended card size. It helps take the pressure off of art creation to know nothing is set in absolute stone.

Check out my finished card above! Want to create one yourself? Share it with the hashtag #sketchbooksquad over on social media.