The Nutcracker

the Mouse King

To create artwork for my Nutcracker Sketches fabric design, I first had to learn more about the story then began to select which scenes I wanted to include.

Dance of the Snowflakes

I selected color schemes and a light on dark value strategy to suggest both the mood and night time scenes of the story, and the impression of stage lighting for the ballet performance.

the Sugar Plum Fairy dances with her Cavalier

I used the hard and soft chalk pastel brushes in Corel Painter for the artwork.

the Marzipan Dance

I worked towards keeping an emphasis on gesture in my illustrations and a minimum of strokes to not overwork them and maintain a sketch-like quality.

Marie and her Prince fly away back home from the Land of the Sweets

I created each illustration separately using a shared palette in Corel Painter. I then used Adobe Photoshop to assemble them all together into the final design.

Land of the Sweets vignettes ~ Act 2

During assembly, I uploaded my design to Spoonflower and used their pattern tile repeat tool to test the basic layout and decide what type of repeat I would use before working on the transitions between the separate illustrations.

unable to sleep after the party, Marie gets up at midnight to care for the broken Nutcracker toy ~ Act 1

Marie’s Nutcracker comes to life and fights the Mouse King ~ Act 1

I used some soft and dry brushes in Photoshop and some layer masks to refine some of the transitions in the final design, and in some instances went back to Corel Painter to refine some details in the figures.

my fabric design in half-brick repeat

In the final printed fabric, the figures range in size from 1″ for the seated figures in the sleigh to 4.25″ for the Mouse King. The design printed nicely on silky polyester faille from Spoonflower. Now I can’t wait to sew something up with the fabric.