Enchanted Creatures

Johanna Basford's Enchanted Forest fills one for a longing for magical things. That was my initial reaction while leafing through the pages of the Italian printed version I found in National Bookstore in Manila. The day I decided to color a page I started with this image of two unicorns which reminded of an emblem of a royal family.

The first thing I did was create a shadow of the entire 'emblem' using gray soft pastel. Ever since I was in grade school this was a thing I'd do to my art works to give it a different twist or look. I'm glad it still worked because other coloristas noticed from the final work that the image seemed to be floating on top of the page.

I also began with the idea of making the design between the creatures heads brightly lit so as to cast shadows on the rest of the imag, hence the black color behind on the otherwise purple unicorns.

I relied on Colleen wax pencils in my initial works such as this one.

It was a simple project and I loved doing it, took me about a day to finish everything. One colorist commented that the red and purple colors reminded her of royalty, how nice, I didn't even think of that.

The shadow all around seemed to lift the entire image off the page. You should try it, too!

The day after I did the unicorns I came across this dragonfly from the same book and decided I wanted to spend the day with her. The colors were unplanned, I just picked them from my stack. For the shadow effect I decided to use the Mungyo light green soft pastel. After completing it I wasn't quite satisfied with the result so I decided to rely again to the same gray I used for the unicorns. Then darker, it somehow worked.

I should say that I finished the dragonfly to the tune of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy by Pentatonix. Had a wonderful, magical experience doing this. 

In my iPhone screen I would play with this image by simply sliding the screen up and down to the point of only showing the tail (when up) or the head (when down). "Look, it looks like its wings are fluttering!" I'm such a kid this way haha!