Christmas Card History 2005 - 2014

(I took photos of the cards using my small digital camera, without taking a great deal of care over lighting and the "bowing" distortions
associated with using a wide angled lens. Colour accuracy is likely to be a bit suspect, too.)

1985 to 1994 1995 to 2004 2005 to 2014 2015 to 2024

 

 

.

2005

Media: Pastel on black card, then scanned for printing.

Production method: Home inkjet printer on white card.

Other notes: Some years I do okay working in colour; other years I don't. This is one of the other years.

 

 

2006

Media: Pencil sketch scanned and manipulated digitally.

Production method: Home inkjet printer on white card.

Other notes: This was based on a photo of me holding Laura, one of my triplet nieces not long after she had been born.

 

 

2007

Media: Scanned photograph of sunset and digitally constructed camels, wise men, and star.

Production method: Home inkjet printer on white card.

Other notes: This is the first entirely electronic creation (well, apart from the fact that the sunset photo — taken at the top of Mt Wellington — was originally on slide film). The camels and wise men were created in Illustrator ... or, at least, one was, and then I copied and manipulated it to make the other two. This is another of my favourite cards.

 

 

2008

Media: Created using Illustrator and Finale.

Production method: Home inkjet printer on white card.

Other notes: The music was produced using Finale, and Illustrator took care of the artwork and made it very easy to have a graduated dusk sky.

ˆ

 

2009

Media: Created in Illustrator.

Production method: Digital image printed as a JPEG photo (i.e., a photographic print) at Boots in Oxford. Prints then pasted onto white card.

Other notes: Like the Newfoundland card created 11 years earlier, this one was inspired by the fact that I was in Oxford on sabbatical in the latter half of 2009. The trees were notably skeletal (especially for someone from Australia where the native trees are almost all non-deciduous); cyclists were ubiquitous (not that they really wore gowns, and apparently mortars are not worn while cycling at all!); and the buildings on the left are part of Christ Church. The barn ("stable"), however, is a generic barn ... not that the wise men went to the stable. Illustrator has a watercolour brush effect for doing washes; if I was really clever I'd have worked out how to make each brush stroke look different.

 

 

2010

Media: Ink and ink wash on white cartridge paper, scanned for printing.

Production method: Home inkjet printer on creamy yellow "parchment" paper (the image here is actually the original white image run through a sepia filter).

Other notes: A description of the production of this card, and a little of the history behind the whole collection, can be found at hchick.net/blog/?p=1726.

2011

Media: Created in Illustrator.

Production method: Digital image printed as a JPEG photo (i.e., a photographic print). Prints then pasted onto grey card. There was also a small run where this design was printed direct to white card using my inkjet printer.

Other notes: I learned a little bit more about using Illustrator, but still know very little. I'd wanted to make the shadows/gradation of shades smoother, but ran out of time to figure out how to do it. Believe it or not, all the stars are 8-pointed, and some copying and pasting was involved to produce so many, with some rotations, reflections, and deletions in order to make this cheat less obvious.

2012

Media: I did a pencil sketch on paper, and then scanned this in to the computer and used the scan as a template/basis for the finished product. The figures were actally drawn using a drawing tablet in Illustrator. No colour this time.

Production method: Digital image printed as a JPEG photo (i.e., a photographic print). Prints then pasted onto white card.

Other notes: The design idea was an extension of an earlier whimsical creation, where I'd designed a set of those "My Family" rear window stickers resulting in a stick figure "My Family" nativity, with stylised hands, feet and faces, and complete with stick figure sheep. I've occasionally wondered if my whimsy isn't bordering on the irreverent, but we could just call it "a contemporary pop-culture interpretation".

2013

Media: Sketched using "Procreate" on the iPad. I used a stylus, but also did a little finger-painting. "Procreate" is quite a powerful drawing app, and is "freer" for sketching than Illustrator.

Production method: Home inkjet printer on grey card.

Other notes: -.

2014

Media: Created on Procreate on the iPad with multiple layers.

Production method: Digital image printed as a JPEG photo (i.e., a photographic print). Prints then pasted onto pale yellow card.

Other notes: -.

 

1985 to 1994 1995 to 2004 2005 to 2014 2015 to 2024

 

Christmas cards designed by Helen Chick. (c) Copyright 2005-2014.