Merry Christmas and Merry Jöl (ancient Norse holiday where many modern Christmas traditions are believed to originate from, and not to be confused with the Winter Solstice) from Scandi-Merica! A wonderful time of year with (ideally) a snow covered landscape to feel joy in the peaceful winter atmosphere and enjoy holiday feasts and fun with friends and family. Couples Brúnn and Jarpr; Gulr and Ætta are enjoying a toast of Glögg (Non-alcoholic of course) and the ancient Jöl tradition of feeding the ravens.
I've been working on this single page Christmas card-style comic for a while now, and this is maybe my favorite coloring that I've done yet! I did some more experimenting, to the point where I felt like posting two pictures. The first one is what I originally visualized, with Gulr and Ætta both having the same shade of green for their sweaters and the symmetrical flipping of green/red for the two couples. However, the coloring process on paper looks a little different from the final scanned in version, as the forest green kind of blends in with the black inks, I thought it might look a bit confusing on whose arm is whose for Gulr and Ætta. So I colored her sweater in as a lighter green, which I think looks really nice too, and even still works symmetrically considering Brúnn has a lighter red/pink as part of her sweater.
I was still curious to how the forest greens would look together, knowing my past experiences with the green and black inked lines becoming more distinct in the scans. So on a separate print, I colored in just Ætta with the forest green so I could see how it looks after scanning both in. Took a little bit of touching up after pasting in the completed one, but I think the colors look good and the lines clear enough to differentiate each characters arms in the toast. I also added some white touches to Brúnn. However, I love how both look and was having a hard time picking between the two, so I decided to post both. I also experimented with using different colors for the raven outside my usual choice of grey, adding in some more texture and purple accents. However on paper I wasn't sure if I'd rather have just the grey, so I did that on the same other print with Ætta. After scanning in though, I loved how he came out, so I stuck with that.
Which one is your favorite? Do you like both Gulr and Ætta wearing forest green, or do you prefer the lighter green and like how it compliments the lighter red/pink that Brúnn has? Also, what's been your favorite of this year's Scandi-Merica strips?
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