Postcards: Hydra Portal

Postcards: I Must Not Fear

Anxiety is pretty common place these days.  I have friends going through some rocky patches, and the country as a whole is trying to pull out of a tragic spiral.  Perhaps it was coincidental that I chose to reread Dune during this time; nevertheless, I was once again drawn to The Litany Against Fear.

Currently my brain is trying to explore The Litany however it can.  In this post I can concentrate on the artistic path that led to a postcard, but I have included a few images that might lead to other paths.

I first thought I would use collage to find a figure to place on a background, remove their body and replace it with The Litany.

I tried using sticky notes to make The Litany a series of sequential images.  I liked where it was going, but not useful for my postcard needs.

I really should do more color tests before working; I am not a patient artist.  This is the rare occasion I actually tried out my watercolors to see if I could create the fade from sky to ground that I wanted.

I also tested the coppery ink I wanted to use for legibility across all the colors of the background.

And then I pretty much just went for it.

Postcards: Not By Might

I know, you are thinking "hey, that image is from the last post!"  And you are correct to think that.  I want to share with you how I just keep trying out elements I like until I find a home for them.  The text in this version is all one piece, and I really like the look of it, so I saved it for another day.

It fit really well on this background painting, but then I had to fit the final element to it.

And so it came to be that I finally used the "Not By Might" plaque with a light-bulb eyed mannequin. 

Postcards: Mushroom Desert

I went into this one with no real plan.  Just elements that I thought might work together.  I was pretty confident in my background and midground.

After that, Jen shot down a series of foreground elements. 

I ended up really liking the girl in the pink hat, and went with that.

Postcards: Playing With Stickers

Process fans, your voice has been heard.  I am starting to record more steps.  More false starts and spinoffs.  This started with trying to illustrate a spread winged beetle, so that I might replace the beetle body with stickers.

That didn't work at all how I wanted.

I decided to jump away from illustration to 100% collage.  I chose a background I liked and started messing around with it.

Laying out all the pieces loose suggested that this card would probably come together in a satisfying way, so I went for it.  I trimmed the lungs sticker down a little.  Then I glued the background to the postcard and started layering stickers.

Postcards: Шигирский идол

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