For anybody working in seasonal marketing, they will already be painfully aware of the disconnect between the creation of a holiday campaign and the lived customer experience. Somebody has to design, develop and make these things long before anyone might actually feel festive. I found myself working on festive themed illustrations all the way back in February of this year; in preparation for the upcoming Christmas season. I do enjoy working on a wintery painting, which is just as well, because here I am still creating snow scenes as we suffer a July heatwave! 🥵 As an example, here’s a couple of illustrations from this week…

It’s Mottisfont again, which is always a fun study in landscape and architecture, but this time imagined with a sprinkling of snow and decorated for Christmas. I quite liked the minimalist starts to the sketch in these ones… with the building picked out in detail, but lots more empty space in the sky and foreground. Hopefully giving myself room to be expressive with the brush. The results were perhaps more subtle than I expected. They were both created on paper, acrylic paint and ink pen, so I was able to capture a little time-lapse footage at my desk. The mottisfont artwork was scanned and I was able to create some mockups for potential card designs

Not only do I find myself painting new snowy scenes, but i’m also making lots of stock for my existing festive lines. I now supply my cards and small gifts to a number of shops, with quite a few of them here in Winchester. It’s such a good destination for tourists (and quite a few of them international visitors) so a surprising number of Christmas decorations and cards are sold over the Summer! This week i’ve pressed over 100 ornaments using the heat press equipment I now have in the studio.

I was also able to trial print those Mottisfont snow scenes. I’m really enjoying having that ability to test out designs quickly and manufacture quality samples… although it’s not the sort of week you really want to be working over a hot machine!

I’m sure these wont be the last of my festive projects this year, but I will try to take a short break from the never ending Christmas run-in as I prepare for the Open Studios in August.