My Coloring Debut: Festive Rudolph

Now that I have a better device than my phone to use, I'm so excited to start my new hobby!

Remember when mandalas were a trend? Those mandalas were the contents of adult coloring books which I often see in bookstores back then. I used to want it and even thought of putting that in my wishlist for a Christmas Party then. In the end I didn't add it to my wishlist because of priorities. But I always wanted to get one.

Having an actual coloring book, you'd also need coloring supplies which would drain my bank account for sure. I wouldn't be satisfied with just one set, I know myself that I would end up buying different sets and different kinds. 💸

Fast forward to 2024, I can now fulfill my coloring dreams! I'm using an app called Pigment and while I needed to pay for the premium services, I'm actually a little satisfied with the free features for the meantime. I just started this hobby recently, so I'm being careful with cashing out.

Anyhow, since it's almost Christmas, there's this reindeer illustration that was available for free download so I didn't think twice and added it to my library.

Before starting my coloring, I checked on inspirations that were published and found 2. In just a few hours upon the illustration was released, there were already 2 people who have finished their work. And they were pretty great!

This was my first coloring so I really don't know how to use the app yet or how to make the colors look great so I was taking a bit of my time. Besides that, I also had to think what colors should I be using.

I think I chose a hard illustration to work on my first coloring project.

But I never gave up.

I started working on the horns, using 2 kinds of brown. I wanted to have a save feature of all the colors I used but it seems like I couldn't find that in the app. I was quite satisfied with how the horns turned out so I moved on to the next.

I've been using the oil as brush because only 3 were available for free users: oil, pencil and marker. Blender was also available so I was also experimenting with it.

I used 2 colors for the Christmas decor worn over the reindeer's neck. Is this called garland? Or wreath? Or what? I don't really know the name. 😅

It took me a while to decide what to use for the reindeer's body. It's usually brown, but I want to use a different color. In the end, I went with brown. LOL

This time, I used textures because some were free. I just gently brush it on the reindeer's face and some on his body.

Lastly was the lights and some ornaments around the horns. I decided to make this colorful and a bit vibrant. I'm also experimenting what I could do so I went all out with using different colors.

I couldn't decide what background to use but since I didn't like the plain white, I used a marker with some kind of light green pastel as its background. I wanted to do more with the background like the inspirations but with limited brushes and textures, it became a simple background. I still think it's nice.

The finished product looked great, at least in my eyes. My partner also approves. 😅 I was satisfied with how it turned out. And yes, my stress levels went down during the entire process.