Hello! This assignment was to design a greetings card telling my tutor about myself, my interests and inspirations, the materials I feel happy working with and what I would like to get out of the course. I love greetings cards yet getting this assignment done took me ages to see to the end! A part from moving house, a crazy workload at the office and various work trips – I also ended up doing various greetings cards and things for colleagues’ birthdays or leaving parties and a set of Christmas card designs for my Aunt. Finally, I got down to making a greetings card that says something about me, as instructed!
Initial Brainstorming
Where to start? I had no idea! So while I was doing other greetings cards I kept this task on the back burner ticking over. I started doing collections on Pinterest that were on topics of things I liked – a part from Christmas itself of course! I love nature, animals, birds, cool greetings cards… Since starting this course I have loved exploring watercolours which I have never used before. No text, simple, clean, fresh and bright colours without being overpowering. See my Pinterest boards here. I decided that above all else, the design had to be to my liking if it were to say something about myself.
Getting started
There are many things in nature I could have picked to illustrate but I chose the dragonfly. They are beautifully colourful, evasive, mysterious and just about the coolest insect out there. I admit I have spent many an hour chasing them round tropical parks and gardens with my Nikon trying to get the perfect shot (my own photo above!). So I started doodling some dragonflies and collecting examples in Pinterest. I also wanted to continue exploring with water colours and ink so stuck to that too.
Colours
My design also had to be colourful and bright and use my favourite colour combinations. I am a die hard turquoise kinda gal or really bright reds and hot pinks but love colourful combinations. Santa got me new watercolours so I decided to try out some colour palettes too. I wanted it to be bright yet wistful.
There are too many good combinations!!! I decided to keep that decision till later once I had a good design I wanted to try out.
Inspiration
So then what inspires me? A lot of things do but then I got to thinking about what I first really loved when I studied Art back in school. I was very inspired by Tiffany, Mackintosh and Gaudi and general Art Nouveau styles. I much prefer impressionism too in terms of painting style and all of this is usually quite reflective of nature and people going about their daily business. Thus my style would have to use elegant lines and shapes based on nature, be colourful without being overpowering, positive, light and pleasant.
Card type
It’s perhaps only personal taste but I find square cards or rectangular cards that are longer on their vertical axis much nicer and more interesting than your typical upright rectangle. Nonetheless I had a bash at trying out different positions of different dragonflies in cards to see if that would help me with the design. But I just kept going back to square!!
Bringing it all together
To be honest it all came together at the last moment. I wasn’t sure about colours, nor card format, not shape nor the final design. It was quite a fluid process up to the point of using proper watercolour paper and taking the time to really measure out and do a design that I liked.
I first tried out some dragonfly positions like the proposals I had done but felt there was more I could do to bring in more style and frame the dragonfly. So I started playing around with circles and flowing lines coming from the wingtips and got to a nice enclosure of the dragonfly inside the circle. I felt like this was neat, clean and crisp and that if I could combine it with some bordering it could be a nice ensemble.
So I tried the above and actually really quite liked this combination. My preferred one being the top left given the simple frame and only one single dragonfly, I got to work on the final result as per the below using the yellow and green from the top left and blue/turquoise green from the bottom left dragonfly.
Reflections
I’m an impatient person. This makes it hard for me to move forward in the sketchbook as I try out things as I would like to have the right idea straight away! Obviously this is not how sketching and pulling ideas together works – so once I started to be more creative and do quicker ideas and drawings and actually stop looking at other people’s illustrations and collected photos etc, things flowed much more smoothly. (Noting that it was necessary to first collect and look at other images and designs to get ideas and inspiration of course).
I also found it hard to ‘structure’ the things I wanted to explore. I jumped from drawings to colours to potential card shapes back to drawing wings and trying out wing styles then on to more abstract designs and flowing line trials… Even having done all that, I still did not have one specific idea in mind until I started looking back at it all and reflecting a little and finally, choosing a direction!
I think that I chose the style I did because it wasn’t just an illustration of a dragonfly, it was framed in a combination of styles and colours that made the illustration more about me, my style, my preferred medium at the moment and what inspires me. That said, I also really like the more freestyle dragonflies I did with a lot of movement in the wings and more sketchy ink which made it more fanciful and plan I to use that style and those designs in future cards I might make. Working with the different nib sizes with proper sketching pens was also really fun. I really like how it makes every single little design idea entirely different and with no room for manoeuvre – you can’t rub out ink..
The style I chose also might work better if done digitally just because of the very clear forms and lines. This might make it look too clinical but that is another experiment to do once I have mastered InDesign or Photoshop!
Greetings
As for what should be written in the card? I talk and write far too much and it would never fit inside a 14x14cm card…. Which is why I did an entire blog post about myself, my interests and inspirations, the materials I feel happy working with and what I would like to get out of the course, check it out here!
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