Since I swore to only give out cards I make myself this year, I’ve had two birthday card projects this month: One for Claire (my co-blogger here on CC for those not in the know) and one for Zack, a friend here in Boulder. Throughout this process, I’ve discovered I LOVE making cards for my friends and family! These projects allow me to really focus on the individual and explore a wide variety of styles and techniques to make something I think they’ll love.
So for my post this week I’m sharing some of the steps along the way to creating these handmade birthday cards and of course the final results (which I was super pleased with in both cases). There were many challenges that arose during the painting process, but I never got bogged down in negative thinking, just found workarounds or tried again. This was creativity at its most enjoyable for me!
First, let’s begin with Claire’s birthday card:
Claire had asked for a mermaid painting a little while back, so the choice of subject for her card was obvious. I knew I wanted to incorporate pearls, because on her last visit she’d bought a pearl bracelet she’d fallen in love with. In my journal I sketched out a few quick ideas.
I then took my favorite idea and did a light pencil sketching on my choice of coldpress paper.
I experimented with a quick color study to decide on what colors to use and practice with creating a pearl look. The metallic paints don’t show well in digital format, but I was using a pearl Greenleaf & Blueberry metallic paint to give the pearls their opalescence.
And here’s the final result! I made the mistake of doing an immediate blue wash over the entire painting to give the skin and tail a blue undertone, which worked well, but it also hid most of my pencil design beneath the blue (having never painted over pencil before, I’d thought the lines would be more resilient… live and learn!). I had to simplify the design to just the mermaid and the largest pearl, as these were the only lines I could still just make out.
This is the first painting of a person where I played with shading the skin for shadows and light spots. I struggled with drawing the hand (why are hands so hard?!), so it turned into a sort of flipper instead. This painting had a lot of tiny detail work, which was challenging. Struggles aside, I’m SUPER proud of how my mermaid turned out, and I really do see Claire when I look at her!
I tried out my calligraphy on the back of her card once I’d completed the painting. This caused a near-catastrophe, when I chose to add some splashes of gold using a new gold ink pen. Turns out, this ink RUNS, and it dropped some heavy spots on the paper, which nearly bled through onto the painting on the other side (AHHHHH!). I had to do some serious detail work to hide these dark spots on the original painting and it made me question the wisdom of using the back side of a painting as a place to write on…
The last step was to get the envelope together, and the only size I had on hand that would fit the painting was a boring manilla envelope. This actually turned into a positive, as it gave me an opportunity to use a white pencil to create an interesting design. I’ve covered over our addresses on the image below, but otherwise here’s what the final result looked like! The stars were actually a random doodle I made in my journal one day and I love it so much I’ve been using it in different designs ever since.
Now, for Zack’s card:
Ever since I’d made Claire’s old-timey silhouette valentine I knew I wanted to try a similar idea for Zack’s birthday card. Zack’s the co-founder of the digital security company Rarefied, along with my partner Brian. I work for them, and thus have seen the several iterations of the company’s logo. It began with a silhouette of a man and turned into a triangle with an arrow. I wanted to merge both in this design for his birthday card, and began with some simple sketches in my journal.
It took two previous tries (on the right side of the image below) to get the process down for the third and final piece, seen here in its early stage on the left. Working with an initial India ink wash and then doing a second layer wash of a black watercolor meant that keeping the white triangle white was even trickier than I had initially thought. I also messed with a few different black watercolors before finding the mix I liked best.
Here’s the piece with the background wash and man’s silhouette complete. Now I just needed to remove the masking fluid from the triangle (hoping all the while it was still white!), paint in the party hat, and clean up the lines.
Here’s the final result! I loved creating the various layers of black for the background (and the India ink wash was perfect for this project), and the bright splash of color of the hat really gives a lovely contrast.
I again practiced my calligraphy on the back of the card, using the same Beth style from The Postman’s Knock that I wrote about here. For this card I chose to work with a super heavyweight paper (300# Arches coldpress), so I wasn’t worried about any ink bleeding through to the other side on this painting. I splashed some metallic paint for a bit of pizzazz and decorated the envelope with a simple “Z.”
I’ll be sharing more of my card creations in the future, and if anyone else would like to play along I’d love to see what you create!
Compulsive Creation 