This was originally written for my Patreon in 2019 and I’m reposting it here. My personal Christmas card for family and friends featured my Trapped Ghost inside a snow globe! I also then turned it into a printed card for my shop the following year and you can still buy some in my shops.
I wanted this to be a hand-drawn style to match the previous Trapped Ghost drawings from my 100 Day Project. I also wanted to use some of my Snow Day characters so I made a basic line template in Illustrator first. I don’t worry too much about placement or sizing as I can change that later. I just realised I forgot to add the bunny’s pink cheeks to the finished illustration!
I then create a new file in my drawing program on the iPad. I used Adobe Sketch for this as that’s what I used previously but I mostly prefer Procreate now and really regretted it, especially since I ended up re-drawing the Ghost anyway. I could really have done with the drawing assist feature for a perfect circle.
I made a guide on SCK recently, on using digital colouring pages, and that’s exactly how I set up my outline drawing as a guide. I mostly used the pencil brush with some rough brushes (Kyle’s are awesome) for texture. I was a bit stuck with it near the end until I removed the outlines, made the Ghost a bit transparent and gave him a paper crown! I think he figured if he’s trapped in a Christmas snowglobe he might as well join in.
Here’s the finished card – the dark blue background didn’t print very well so I changed it to a sky blue instead. I had a pack of mixed red and green cards and just stuck them on with glue dots. My family’s cards were mostly on red with Merry Christmas and I also did a batch of Happy Holidays ones.
Here’s how the professionally printed version turned out, with the original night sky in a better shade for printing. I haven’t started my personal Christmas card for this year yet but I have a few ideas so better get a move on.
