 Hi there, I'm Sandy Alnok, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube. I'm going to give you a tip for scenes, a simple scene, creating a frame of treats. And I'm going to be using a stamp set from Penny Black with this Santa Claus that I've been dyeing the color as soon as I saw him in their catalog. I'm like, I have to have that stamp and I have to color it. It's just so cute. He's such a vintage kind of Santa. So I'm going to start by coloring him, and I'll give you a few tips on coloring him as we go. But the main point of this video is of course the trees that are going to go behind him. And a lot of people want to do scenes and they're like, I don't know what to do. I don't know where to start. So this is going to be a real basic way to think about a scene and how to add some drama and impact to a scene while keeping it really simple and straightforward. So you'll need an image like him that's going to be your focal point, and then you'll add that scene around him. Some people I recommend doing the scene first if you're new to doing scenes because you don't want to spend all your time coloring the image and then not end up with feeling happy about how you do the background colors. So if you want to do the background color first, you could certainly do that. So I'm adding an R89 color to my base of my lighter red in all my shadow areas. And my light is going to be coming from that star. So kind of shining down from him, from the star on him all over his little outfit here. And so I'm blending out the dark red with my medium red, this R37. The R89 and R37 are the two that I recommend for coloring anything red. Use any of the light reds, but if you use these two with it, and use a heavy amount of it, a lot of people stop before they really are done. With reds you really do need to do a lot of blending. Stay away from the real close edges of whatever you're coloring because reds will bleed and they're a lot harder to get off of. So if you end up coloring something and you have too much red bleeding through and you're trying to use your colorless blender to get rid of it, it's really, really hard to do. And yes, I will catch that extra piece of the red scarf later on at the bottom there. I did forget to put that on for the time being, but I'll add it later. I'm adding this really dark gray, which is probably freaking some people out. Breathe. Just breathe, breathe, breathe. Trust me. And I'm adding this gray because I want to have some real strong contrast in this piece. So I'm coloring over all of the areas that are going to be white, except a little bit on his face. I'll leave his face blank. Trying to figure out here too what else needs to be red. I'm not sure with that little red pieces around his tummy that I missed there, but color that over with red. Now I'm going to add some shadows onto the scarf using the same colors that I used before, just putting the shadows at the bottom. And then I'm going to add a little shadows onto the white parts of the scarf, one of the big gray parts of the scarf, which is probably freaking people out that I used a W8 when I'm going to make it white. But you'll see how that's going to make a difference in the long run when we're all finished. So now I'm going to jet onto the background, and this is the part that you may want to start with if you're new to doing scenes, because this will take some time and if you spend your time doing that, you may be frustrated with yourself if you screw that up after spending all your time coloring your image. So here I'm going to try to put some lighter blue right around the star and start working my way into darker blues as I move out and away from it to create the rest of the sky scene. Notice that I'm going over it a few times. Don't feel like one time is going to be enough, or gee whiz, I spent all this time doing it and that much didn't work. Keep going. Because I'm telling you, if you keep going and put more color on, all of a sudden it will come together. It's almost like this weird magic thing that Copic Markers do where you think you're not getting there and you think it's a hot mess, and I've done some videos like this recently where it was like, even I was questioning, is this really going to work? Am I going to have to start the video over again? But it really does. After a certain period of time, the colors just start to work together. It's like you have to have enough ink on the paper for it to play nice together or something. I'm not really sure what. And on a card like this where you're going to add the trees, you really only need enough of the blue smooth in the areas that are going to be open. So I'm going to focus more on making sure I have a good bit of smooth area right in the center above that star and stuff because I'm going to put the trees to the left and right. But I'm going to continue to put the blue on out to the edges of the card just because that's going to leave me some space in between the trees that will already be blue. And if your trees are going to be filled in solid, you'll see what I mean at the end of this. If they're going to be filled in really solid, then you don't even need to worry too much about having some background in behind them. So now I'm going to go even darker with another layer of dark moving out from that center spot where that little white star is going to be and adding just darker and darker blue as I go. When I got out to the edges of this one, I'm not going to continue this dark blue all the way down to the bottom. You certainly can, but I know that my trees are going to go up that far. It's going to cover that much of it. And as long as my sky is going to look like a continuous sky behind where I'm working, then I'm okay with stopping that blue because I'm going to cover the rest of that anyway. Next is determining a little more surely where my horizon line is going to be. So I added the horizon line. And then I'm going to block in some basic trees. So basic triangles. And I'm not worried too much about sketching them perfectly right now. I'm just trying to make a dramatic group of trees, one on the left, one on the right, where they get smaller toward the center and taller and bigger toward the outside. So on the right hand side, it's going to go all the way up covering that entire area all the way to the top of the card and then all the way down to the bottom. And I may add some more trees on the inside so you can sort of decide how dramatic you want it. The more you have those trees kind of going from the very tall on the outside to very short on the inside, then you're going to have more drama. It's going to look like a really deep forest like this. He's running past an opening in the trees where you're going to have this really big drama. These black tree shapes are not hard to do. I'm adding just scribbly lines on the outside of them. And as long as you've got that basic triangle tree shape, you're going to be able to maintain the look of a tree. So just remember that you've got that tree and make sure your triangles are straight. You don't want your trees leaning. Well, unless your whole thing is looking like a windy scene, you could make a windy scene that way. But I'm just adding scribbly lines on the outside of them. Don't stress out about like, oh my gosh, they don't look exactly like trees. On a card like this, people are going to, in their mind, think that it's trees because it's Santa Claus and it's a winter scene and, you know, if you put snow on it, they're going to be like, yeah, it's all trees, it's all good. Go over that again a couple of times if you need to to make it kind of nice and smooth. You can adjust the snow line so I can make it a little bit more whimsical by making it swoopy. And then I thought another little tree back in here would be nice to just finish off that that cascade of trees coming down from the top and and to finish off that scene. Next is the white pen, the magic of the white pen. Now, I did lose my Sharpie and I have one on order. I'm waiting for it to come. But unfortunately, it has not come yet. So I'm going to use the Signo pen. The white Sharpie is not going to necessarily be as bright white as this anyway. So this may be a better one to use for this particular type of project. So I'm adding white onto the beard, et cetera. And when I do it over top of all that dark color that I've already put down, then you can tell the difference between the white and the the shading underneath of it, because otherwise you just have a big blob of white and here I can add more white pen on the area that's facing toward the star and less white pen away from it. And it just suddenly makes it look a lot brighter. So here on my scarf, I can add just a few dots onto each one of those sections. And now it looks like he's wearing a red and white scarf, not a red and gray scarf, which I know many of you probably panicked over. And I am sorry for panicking you if that is indeed what happened. But you should know by now to trust me, trust that I'm going to pull it out of the realm of, oh, my gosh, crazy with what I do next, because that's who I am. A lot of my stuff looks like a hot mess until it's not. And many of you who have taken the mini courses, especially because those are scene courses over at art-classes.com. There's links in the doobly-doo. Many of you have taken the scene courses have said that in those courses, the biggest thing you've learned is to just keep going. So I tell you again, keep going. Now, I put stars in the sky, but you could also just add snow all over everything, especially if you don't like your trees, just add lots and lots of snow. And no one will know the difference. It'll be all great. And this is another stamp that's in the set. And I thought I'd show it to you anyway while I'm here. And I use the same kind of technique, but with light blues instead. So I have a cascade of trees and a wispy snow line. I put snow over top of the whole image this time. And there's a lot of different ways that you can use this, these trees to create a scene and create some drama around your focal image. Thank you so much for joining me. Click that like button. If you enjoyed this video, if you learned something from it, share it with your friends, watch another video and then go make something. Don't just watch videos. Go make something and I'll talk to you guys later.