Illustrator | Snow

I began making the scenery for my book cover today, adding in the snow for Mole to be standing on was my first step. I decided to add a snowy texture onto the floor because it gives a sense of realism, and something for Mole to be positioned upon. Without this he looks as if he's just floating in mid air, and it also mean't I could add extra details such as foot prints, just like I've been inspired by in David Petersens work. 

To start with I created a scatter brush, and to do this I had to make some shapes using the shape tools in Illustrator. I decided to go with making 4 circular shapes all filled with cold colours. I chose 2 different shades of blue and grey to fill them with as I thought these would give enough contrast, but not stand out too much from anything else. I think it gives a great snowy texture like you get in reality, whilst still being in keeping with my art style.

Below is an image of the brush, the scatter brush options dialog box showing my customised settings, and finally at the bottom an image of Mole and the snow covered ground in front of him. 

To create the footprints in the snow I used a the brush tool with a fairly rough edged brush option. I then drew out a circle and resized it to match what I think should be the size of Mole's footprint. I think to improve these I could have added a very slightly darker shade of grey in the middle to act as a shadow, but apart from that I'm very happy with them so far.