Can't believe how quickly this year went by! This was my first year with Pixel Shavings, and I want to thank Hazel, Russ, Sheri, Fred and John for all their encouragement. I feel honoured to be part of this amazingly talented group.

This week, I'm going to show you how I created my winter-themed illustration, SNOW FLIGHT, using Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro app for the iPad. First I created the sky in a separate layer using a flat blue. Then I added texture in a slightly darker blue.



One of the advantages of working digitally is that it's easy to make copies, in case I screw up. Before making a radical change to any layer, I always make a copy of that layer and then hide it, just in case I need it later. In the image below, you can see how I've hidden the extra layer by clicking on the eye icon. In the active/topmost layer, I then activated the transparency mask and then added a sunrise texture/color. Because of the mask, I'm only painting on blue part of the picture, not the snow.



In a new layer, I created a separate transparency mask for the snow. At first I tried doing this with white but found it too confusing so switched to an obnoxiously bright blue:



After activating the transparency mask for the ground and painting it white, I added some texture to the snow. Then in another layer (I LOVE LAYERS), I did a quickie sketch of the flying girl.



Next, I drew the girl. Um…as you can tell, I pretty much ignored my original sketch. :-) After I finished the ink drawing, I deleted the sketch layer.



Next, I added color. I should note that I always hated coloring when I was in school because I found it so boring; I was always the kid in school who drew stuff so other kids could colour. Now I love it! Coloring's much easier digitally because I can make the brush really big so it doesn't take as long. Then I can add textures.



Here's what the colored version looked like:



I didn't like the way the black outline looked -- too boring and flat compared to the background -- so decided to add my woodcut effect, This is gradually becoming one of my "go-to" illustration styles because it feels so natural to me.

In Photoshop CS5, I use the Layer Mask tool but in this app, I used the Eraser tool instead:

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