Hello, Amy here and it’s time for a new Scenic Saturday card. This time around I’ve made a cute guy card to share. I recently added the first few Squidgies to my Stamping Bella collection and after coloring up this adorable little Fishing Squidgy I can’t wait to add a few more! His rolly-polly sweetness really came to life with every brush stroke of my markers and I love watching that transformation. Because he has such a definite action happening with his showing off of his catch the background scene was pretty much a no brainer. Once Fishing Squidgy was all colored up I proceeded to add a river bank below him, complete with stones and cattails. From there I extended a field out behind him that ends in a tree line off in the distance. If you break it down, the background is basically six horizontal strips of color that span the width of the card; start with blue sky up top, green tree tops, brown tree trunks, green field, brown river bank and finally blue water. What transforms those strips of color into looking like a landscape is the addition of simple shading and contrast, like stippling in darker greens on the tree tops to create the impression of sun dappled leaves or adding the dark spaces in between the tree trunks to add depth beneath the tree canopy. And the beauty of it is, it doesn’t have to be perfect or super detailed. That darling Fishing Squidgy is the real star of the show so as long as he looks good all you need the background to do is create a loose impression of the environment you are after. So try not to get bogged down in background details all the time, when a simpler application of color can work just as well. 🙂

Stay crafty my friends!