Making a Christmas Card
For the last few years now, I’ve been designing custom God Jul cards for BEPE Elektronik, but this year I loosely recorded the process (in pictures) from start to finish.
An idea
One evening in November, on the way home on the train after seeing Cats the musical, I decided to write in my journal and think about upcoming art projects. The annual BEPE Christmas card was one of those projects.
So a quick sketch of what was on my mind was born.
Roughing it out
A second sketch followed a few days after to work out a bit of composition and some forest foraging food stuffs.
The idea was to have some forest Tomte collecting a bounty to welcome in the first snowfall.
Abandon what doesn’t work
Then for some reason, I got it into my head that I needed to oil paint this entire thing. I stopped myself an hour in.
While in theory, it might have turned out, I am by no means an expert at oil painting. I had really bitten off waaaaay more than I could chew. Also, drying time of oil paint is a pain in the ass. Maybe I’ll try again next year, with more practice.
I needed a better plan. So I slept on it for a couple nights.
Adding Friends
On that delicate edge of being awake and asleep, I thought maybe the image message was just too… I dunno, worshiping nature? (Not that I mind, personally. Nature is awesome!) Maybe I should make it more about closing in the old year and bringing in the old with family and friends. I decided to add friends.
Sometimes you got to do what you already know
Earlier this year, I had an idea for another project and was doing some forest forage studies using watercolours. I decided to go back to this and just do the art piece as a watercolour illustration.
Now we’re getting somewhere
The lineart was finalized, and scanned as a backup should something go wrong. As well as testing out some colours.
Colour tests
Prior to painting the lineart, I did some colour testing digitally. Originally I wanted an Art Nouveau, Mucha style colour pallette. While I did like where it was headed, it just didn’t feel very festive.
(A later note in hindsight: I think it would have looked great also)
Choosing colour
So I defaulted to my original idea and started swatching out
Shadows
Prior to colouring, I added shadows in blue. However, the blue I chose dried way darker than I intended. So this would have to be fixed in post.
Final colours
I was quite happy with how the birds turned out! Also, in my digital colour testing phase, and inspired by Mucha, I had desided a nice circle around the image would help bring it all together.
Though, there is still more work to be done! Spoiler, daaamn that bird has huge feet!
You know what they say about tiny birds with big feet…
It just looks weird. Edited. As well as some post colouring decisions. Some greens just didn’t try as vibrant as I wanted them.
There was also the new design element of the circle that was added to the background. I knew I would have some issues trying to get a smooth gradient in all the nooks and crannies, so that was painted, scanned, and added digitatally later.
The Christmas Feast!
In the end, I’m quite happy with how it turned out. I truly enjoyed working on this project. :)
God Jul och Gott Nytt År!
