Andrejaa's blog: ASSIGNMENT 2: Thinking of you

So I came to final step of this part, which refer to creating a set of greeting cards. For this occasion I have chosen to link them with my personal sentiments and wishes., so I decided to create two of them on a theme of having fun in life, third one that celebrates carefree time, fourth one which presents joy in small everyday things, and last one shows old beauty standard and fashion which changed a lot nowadays but it might be wise to consider it nowadays.

GREETING CARD - HAPPIEST TIME

This card describes my personal sentiments but those sentiments are significant for everyone of us. We all remember our happiest time in our lives when we were happy, young, careless, when we thought that world will be the perfect place to fulfill our dreams and we all want to cherish those memories deep inside and to carry them trough whole life.

Keywords: Retro, vintage, photography, travelling, beautiful landscapes, catching moments, enjoy, freedom, careless, happiness, relaxing, memories

I listed what I could use in working process, I wrote down whatever crossed my mind


Mood board

Thumbnails

Since I started building a handmade collage, most of my visual development was based on combining different cuttings, magazine clippings, changing their positions, adding more and removing existing ones..

I started this project by experimenting with watercolor which I used for a background. In first case I played with aluminum foil which I first painted with watercolors and then I put it on a brown paper for drawing and left to dry. I was delighted with a result. Next thing I did was to play further in order to get more interesting patterns so I took a red color and painted over bubble bag and then stuck to the corner of the same paper. The result was interesting retro style pattern. Later I torn that corner down. I drew with a pencil a retro style camera ,cut it from my sketchbook and glued to the background. Then I searched all through various magazines and found this vintage suitcases with some cloths on them and merged them with an old black and white photo that shows cats on some old chairs and table. That photo was taken long time ago in summerhouse. I also put the bamboos, which I painted in watercolors because they are symbol of strength and happiness and I simply love them. I added them a few flowers drawn with fiber pens to get liveliness to collage. I put a picture of deer because in the places where I often travelled I came across them so it brings some memories and girl developing photos from the journey. At the bottom of collage I placed an image of an dream place. This a first version of this collage which I later changed a bit.

As I went trough working process I liked the idea to scan a fabric bag as an background so I made some changes. I added a few colorful stripes beneath the suitcases to brighten the design since this is about careless time and precious memories. I added more patterns in a background and old clipping of a woman travelling in the car.

GREETING CARD - ENJOY SMALL THINGS IN LIFE

Using mind mapping helped me identifying keywords, so for this design beside the words written on the paper above, I would add fresh, colorful, energy, richness

Mood board


From the sketchbook

I used a watercolor paper and did the same experiment with painted aluminum foil and I liked the effect very much. It was something like bright sky and in some part of paper it even looked like ray of lights through the clouds. I decided to build my design on that background.

Idea was to point of our lack to enjoy in simple small everyday things, something that is crucial for our souls but we often diminish it. I made a collage where I put a cup of coffee with a small cookie which I previously painted in watercolor and cut it. Then I used magazine clipping of girl floating with her umbrella with a smile on her face. I also added a cuttings of birds on a blossomed trees, painted orchids, bamboo leaves, and water lilies. As for the cup of coffee I added tablecloth cutting from magazines underneath it. I also used cotton fabric slightly painted with watercolor which I found interesting as a sort of wallpaper behind the coffee cup. I did it on a big paper size so I had to scale it down. This collage was completely hand made, and only scanned.

GREETING CARD - ALL I NEED IS A REAL FUN

The theme for this greeting card is simply fun. Word that is very often mentioned but in real life it seems that is often missing despite all TV shows and movies.


Mood board

Main inspiration came from art journaling which I found amazing. Regarding the theme of fun, I created two greeting cards with slight differences in design. During the internet research I discovered some amazing examples of art journal which inspired me so it made experiment more and more. First I painted the dark gray paper with oil pastel using horizontal stripes in bright colors. Then I took a plain white paper which I put on the patterned wall and started to rub pastels using different colors. I ended with a very interesting background which I painted with yellowish watercolor. When it was dry, I scanned it and used in Photoshop.

At the same time I used thin recycled paper from my notebook and painted with many shades of watercolors by swirling the brush and blowing the color with straw. I like the effect and how paper looked a little bit scuffed.

I played by scribbling various shapes such as hearts, flowers, triangles, rectangles and added one small cutting on the corner. I was trying to collect as much old newspaper and magazines as I could so I used clipping of Geraldine Chaplin on a bike and an old photo. I drew with colored pencils word “FUN” and pasted it.

Creating patterns and backgrounds


Working process

Version #1

Here are the second version of this greeting card. All elements remain the same except background with stripes and I played with different brushes in Photoshop.

Version #2

GREETING CARD – DON'T FALL FOR BEAUTY TERROR

By creating this greeting card I wanted to express my feelings towards nowadays industry and beauty standards which are in my opinion little distorted. Aggressive marketing, Hollywood beauty terror and standards in fashion world, made women natural look and aging are considered as a worst faults. It seems that most beautiful icon back in 1950’ and 1960’ would increase salary of plastic sergeants. Physical appearance has never been much important, so women struggled with the pressure of being always young and perfectly shaped. We read advice every day in every magazine how to prevent aging, what not to eat and do if we want to achieve that everlasting young look. It seems that whole world is spinning only around that. So that is what bothers me. That obsession with perfectly flat belly, artificially smooth face without lines and hips without one gram of fat or a cellulite. So I am going to create greeting card for people who, just like me, think that this brainwashing have gone too far.

I had an idea to portrait a modern woman (perfectly shaped, young and fit) who is laughing at image of former beauties whose body was naturally curved, who had an extra fat, legs that were not perfectly long and shaped, dressed in bathing suits that cover much more for today standards.

I got the idea from the moment I saw package for cereals. I knew that I will use the model from the box, and I needed to picture the rest. I got some old newspaper with image of beauty contestants so I basically didn’t wander a lot in this case. My first idea was to present “perfect model” who are laughing and a big picture of former beauty contestants below. That would give me a good contrast between bright and colorful image and sepia tone of old magazine clipping. As I played further I decided to draw vintage TV and to place old image on screen. I added watercolor background, simple drawn shapes as a path beneath the TV. For the upper part of design I made drawing with a fiber pen, which I wanted to color but it looked better to me if I leave it like that. I put that drawing on embossed glass I created pattern with oil pastels. For this design I was playing with doodle art so I am going to show some experiments.