Merry Christmas!

For my IF visitors:

As last year, and those before, Christmas is coming. 

The feelings are similar, the card is not.

Merry Christmas!

I know is only 4 of december, but if I don't post this now, I might not have another good chance do it.

And next, for the ones interested, here is the process of doing this year card.

I started with a sketch so basic that is not even worth to post... What I wanted was to do a 3D card, sculpted and constructed, with some post editing, since we wanted my daughter to be part of it.

The image, as you can see on top, is in a room, so I started doing the floor.

I cut and glued balsa wood in a solid surface, and then painted with acrylics until I got the basic tone. Then I used color pencils and then more brush to give it the wood texture.

And, after that, I waxed it with and old candle, until it was shinny and perfect.

As usual, only a little part of all the floor can be seen in the final image, but I couldn't risk it been too small.

Then the window. That was fun, just cutting and gluing different sizes of balsa.

Later it was going to be primed and painted.

Here you can see the sculpted elements, my frog Ruperto, a little RC car, and my daughter's body. In the pic they are primed... I had a problem there, since I was painting with acrylics, and I couldn't find a new primer, I used white enamel painting... a disaster! The enamel never dried, and as expected, it was hard for the acrylics to cover it well. So some thinner... and the enamel was gone. I had to re-primer with white paint. It worked well at the end...

A general test view. The letters are and old set of 3D letters for movie credits that as a kid I stole from my grandfather!

Painting miniatures it's been a big hobby for me, so this was fun. The little RC car ended well.

Same with Ruperto.

Here a finished view of the window and the wall.

In a previous image, you can see a yellow masking tape... I was going to use it to mask parts of the wall and paint a different tone, but the tape was translucent... it looked good... and it stayed.

The floor looks nice, don't you think?

Here an almost complete group, testing lights, perspective and all that stuff.

For the final image, the one that ended in photoshop, I needed the group without the wall and window, ad I needed the wall without the group, so I could edit the image better.

This is the image that went to the final edition. That thing in my hand is a led light with some blue paper to try to create some blue reflections "from the window" in the elements. 

Some times I wish I had a real photographic studio.

And here the selected photo of Olivia.

All the rest is photoshop edition, adding sky and the star in the window, correcting colors, masks and all that stuff.
It was fun, and I think it was worth all the work.
I should start giving away the printed cards this week, but as usual, if you visit this blog, you might get to see things first.

I really hope you like it, and all this info is of some use or amusement to you!

Have a good time this year end, and be happy!