Is It Too Early For Some Deborah Muller Christmas Coloring?

The answer is no, no it is not.  Or at least that's what I'm telling myself.  First, a little bit about Deborah Muller.  Like Hannah Lynn, Deborah Muller is an artist I stumbled upon on Amazon when I first started my coloring book obsession about two years ago.  Right now, I have about four main companies/artists I buy my books from: Jade Summer, Coloring Book Cafe, Hannah Lynn and Deborah Muller.  Jade Summer and Coloring Book Cafe are companies; they employ multiple artists who do the artwork for them.  Hannah Lynn and Deborah Muller, on the other hand, are individual artists.  While Jade Summer will always have a special place in my heart (they were the first adult coloring books I started actively buying on a regular basis), I tend to prefer the individual artists just a little bit more.  I find they're more personable on social media, they interact with you more, encourage your art more and tend to be a little friendlier.  That's not to say they aren't friendly on Jade Summer and Coloring Book Cafe's social media, but they're a company, they lack a certain personalization.  You become invested in what the individual artists share about their personal lives, you see them on Facebook all the time looking at the artwork, and you feel a real connection to them.  For that reason, I prefer those Facebook groups and social media just a little bit more.

I started by Deborah Muller Christmas coloring extravaganza with this little cutie from one of her new holiday books: Gnome for the Holidays.  At first, I wasn't entirely sure if I would like this book, but the flip through online convinced me enough to check it out.  It's so adorable, I know I made the right decision.  One thing I enjoy about Deborah's books is the little designs all over the place.  Instead of adding regular details n the mountains, she adds circles, little lines, etc.  At first, it was a little intimidating for me, because I didn't know how to color them, but I just went with the flow.  I knew I wanted cool, arctic colors to go with the picture, so I went along with that to make the mountains pop a little bit in the background.  The color I used for the background (Outerspace) is one of my favorites to use for night skies because it's a SUPER dark blue that looks almost black, but isn't.  The problem is that streaks show in the coloring very easily.  The good new is that also blends really easily, so I'm able to fix that problem.

My blending technique is really simple.  Sometimes I use a white colored pencil, but that's extremely rare.  Most of the time, I take little scraps of toilet paper and rub it across the colors I want blended.  It makes such a huge difference.  As I've worked with Crayola colored pencils over the yeas, I've found that the blues blend the best, while the browns blend the worst.  I have no idea why, but it's always extremely difficult for me to blend brown colors (especially when I layer colors, which I haven't been doing a lot of lately).

When I finished this picture, I liked it, but I wasn't in love with it.  I had already flipped through the book and picked a second picture to color for the day.

When I saw this picture, I immediately thought of Santa Clause (even though it's a goat in the background, not a reindeer).  After relying so much on blues and coloring such a dark picture, I knew I wanted something lighter.  I'll be honest, I'm not entirely thrilled with how his outfit turned out, but I struggled a little with how to color it.  I didn't want all red, which is why I added the random light green stripes to break things up a little bit.  Despite that, I really do love this picture.  First of all, I love how bright it is, it's such a huge difference from the first picture I created.  I also like how the face came out on the gnome, I finally got the skin tones down to something that looks good.  Finally, the trees are so adorable.  I wasn't sure how the red circles would look, along with all the different shades of green in the trees.  I've noticed that while I'm coloring, sometimes I think what I'm doing looks terrible.  I just power through it though, as I trust my instincts.  The overwhelming majority of the time, once the picture is done, I'm so thrilled with the outcome because I went with my instincts and trusted my gut.  That's the case with this picture.  Is it perfect?  No.  But I'm pleased with how it came out, and I just think it's adorable.

This picture is from the other Deborah Muller holiday release (she has a third one planned, but it hasn't been released yet), called A Merry Mermaid Christmas.  As the title implies, it's all mermaids celebrating the holidays.  Mermaids are Deborah's specialty, she even calls her company "Chubby Mermaid Art".  Just like the gnome book, I wasn't entirely sure how I'd feel about it when I heard it was being released, but once I saw the flip through, I thought it was adorable.  Most artists show mermaids in warm, tropical environments, but that isn't the case here.  Deborah's are hanging out with polar bears and penguins, bundled up in gorgeous winter outfits and with Christmas trees.  It's definitely a fun take on traditional mermaids.

This wasn't the first picture I picked to do from this book, but it's the one I ultimately decided to color, and the other one would have to wait for another time.  It's a little hard to tell in this picture, but I really messed up the hair.  I attempted to layer some light blue over some timberwolf grey.  I should have known better, I've attempted to do this color layering combination before, and it didn't end well that time either.  To make matters worse, I completely forgot that there's this stunning grey/light blue color already in the Crayola 100 pack called wild blue yonder, and I use it when I want a sky color that's not as bright as sky blue.  I feel so foolish that I forgot about that color, especially because it's one of my go-to colors.

Despite that little setback, I'm pretty pleased with how this picture turned out.  I think it's adorable, and I love the little penguin and seal.  I feel like the splash of color with the starfish and circles in the top left corner is a little bright, but I didn't want it to blend in too much with the rest of the background.

I have two more Deborah Muller Christmas pictures I want to color from her books from last year, but that will have to wait for another post.  In the mean time, her new books are adorable, whimsical and definitely worth adding to your coloring book collection.