I have been working on this print all week and I thought I would share all the stages it went through! My inspiration for this print started with a font in Joseph Balthasar Silvestre’s Alphabet Album. A while back I found a book called “Alphabets and Ornaments” by Ernst Lehner which contained a collection of old images and fonts. I scanned this on my printer and then cropped and saved each letter so I could arrange them how I wanted to. The prep for this was a little time consuming but I think it was definitely worth it.

The next step was to start playing around with how I wanted the (at the time) sticker to look. I used Canva for this because I have a much better understanding of how to use it and its free! Because of the complexity of the images, I couldn’t just crop out the yellow background. So, I was really struggling with having the yellow background blend in with the rest of the image. I ended up coming up with a design I liked and went in to try and turn it into a sticker. I removed the background with Adobe’s free background remover and that was when I started to realize this wasn’t going to work like I expected.

I really did not like how these looked and so I went back to play with it more. My go to when I don’t like how things are turning out is to add in more shapes. I added a diamond shape in the background and changed the colors quite a bit.

I liked this version better, but it was still missing something. I decided at this point that this was going to have to be a print because this was way too intricate for a small sticker. If I was going to spend this much time on the details, it would be better if I just made it into a print.

At about midnight I finally hit gold and ended up with this. I really liked it, but I had been staring at it for far too long and needed to take a break. I reached out to one of my friends, as well as Jay(@jayk_illustration) and Maggie for some input. I came up with some improvements based on all of their ideas. I ended up working on it some more and after playing around with different colors and arrangements I made the final product!

I am overall super happy with how this turned out and I am so glad that I have people that can help me with this stuff. If you are ever stuck on a piece and need some constructive criticism, reach out to people you trust. You can also get similar support from online forums but beware of trolls! I think it’s super important that as artists we realize masterpieces don’t happen overnight. It can take a lot of time to figure out what direction you want to go with creative projects. It’s okay if you make mistakes and it’s okay to take your time! This post is a lot longer than what I’ve done so far but I wanted to explain everything in-depth. I hope you all enjoyed, see you next time!!

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Maggie is @magpiecreationsart on Instagram!

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