Happy Christmas! - a retrospective

I generally don't get too carried away by the christmas spirit but the one thing I have always put a lot of effort in to is making my christmas cards. I don't like the cheesey, consumerist aspect to christmas but I do really enjoy getting in touch with people I care about.

It's also a great opportunity to do something for me – no brand messages to reflect, no identity guidelines to follow. Just something visual and something fun. This year I decided to examine a long running fascination with trees and created a woody scene for Rudolph to frolick in from a series of Chinese clip art images. The texture within the shapes came from the lo-grade nature of the original artwork which became further distressed once scanned and photoshopped.

I liked the end result but in hindsight I think one less layer of trees would have meant Rudolph might stand out a bit more and produced a calmer winter scene. Nevermind, something to think about for next year.

Here are previous year's efforts, interesting to see how my own changing interests have dictated the style and approach of each card. My stencil art period followed the ideasy period which in turn developed into the screenprint approach.