The making of a Christmas card

In September, I was invited to participate in a postcard advent calendar with a lovely group of artists called Vierundzwanziglichter. I just realized I would like to share my process with you.

Coming up with ideas is almost my favourite part of a project, really. We received two prompts to include in our designs: “light” and “star.” My sketches are usually very small, often the size of a stamp, and usually in a small sketchbook, of course. I use a Royal Talens Art Creation Sketchbook 12 x 12 cm. I love to carry it around in my rucksack alongside a pencil case with coloured pencils and my current favourite, a Micron 04 pen.

To generate ideas, I’ll create a list of words related to the topic, forming a kind of mind map. After that, I’ll draw the sketches in a single color.

As soon as I have the foundation for the idea, I'd like to play around with colour to get a sense of what it could look like. After that, I'll make a more detailed version with gouache.

Finally, the final design. I drew everything in Procreate with several different brushes. I wanted to paint the illustration analogously, but in the end, I didn't have the time.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little behind-the-scenes, and if you have any questions, let me know.

Yours,
Andrea