I took my sketches and developed them digitally. After a lot of trial and error I finally created some illustrated designs that I was happy about and felt they were up to a good quality standard. As one of my ideas for influencing my target audience to do something together with their families, I kept the designs with a minimal black outline which will then be coloured or painted by the customer. However after printing some mock ups of these designs on plain white paper and watercolour paper I fear that it looks too simple and does not express my skills as a designer. I then decided to try and colour in the illustration myself to see what different effects I could get with shading and try make it more exciting and engaging. 

From my research I found the colours for christmas are mainly red, green and blue. I filled in the illustrations with these colours adding a shading with a darker tone which brought more depth and detail into the design yet kept it simple. I then wanted to explore with the other designs I had created and see what other effects I could get with the shading. 

After a lot of hours trying to get the shading right on the illustrations I am very happy with the outcome. I feel the two shades of colour help keep it minimal and consistent throughout the designs yet brings it to life giving it more depth. I decided to add a warm yellow colour to represent gold which also works to my advantage as next to the other designs it keeps that christmas consistency without making it look out of place. 

I then explored into other colours that signify christmas in today's society. Purple, teal and silver are colours that are more modern than the traditional red, green and blue. This could work to my advantage as it brings traditional and modern colours together but separately there is still a consistent theme throughout that represents christmas. 

I applied this colour theme throughout my other illustrations which I think works well. However I need to rectify how and what colours would work well next to each other as I'm not sure whether the modern colours work with the traditional colours, although if they worked separately across different media they would keep a consistent theme.

Another idea I tried quickly to see if it was successful was illustrating faces on some of the designs to add a bit of excitement and humour. This is something I would like to explore more as it could work to my advantage for my target audience.