16 Assignment: Illustrated Postcards for Self-Promotion

AS: Then, I had to try to think outside of the box. In your free time, you get to do whatever you want, but in a class it’s slightly different. You have these set expectations. So, I thought, “What’s important to me that’s not me?” I thought about stories my stories had told me about living in the country of Poland when they were kids, where people had animals. So I tried to do that, because it’s still in their behavior and therefore still reflected onto us. We are not city folk, even though I was born here, because of the way my parents raised us.

JMB: So what was your process?

AS: We had to do two-illustration story–to have the two sides connected through character or narrative. (Professor note: this was a requirement of the assignment: make this a mini narrative illustration). I started with the first sketch and then thought about the second half once I had my characters fleshed out.

AS: As you see in the final, they have picnic basket, the other dances on a broken wall with a gate. They are in the country, they are going on a picnic.

And then on the back, they are in food comas, relaxing in the shade, enjoying the day. Getting the sun shining through the leaves was hard for me to do, it’s still a little off. But I think it came out pretty well, on their faces.

JMB: That is a hard think to do. There is an illustrator, Briony May Smith, who has made dappled sunlight one of her calling cards. She’s got it down to a science.

JMB: I want you to speak to the anthropomorphic animals, fantasy creatures, that you tend to draw? It seems like you feel very comfortable making animals act as humans, and getting their expressions in ways that are believable and difficult to achieve–because it’s not like you can look at a reference of a dancing, smiling pig.AS: Yeah! Honestly, I think animals are more interesting to draw as people. You mix animal and human attributes, and that creates an interesting challenge, you have to make them feel human without making them look uncanny. So you need to make it in a way that it looks like an animal that could walk and talk but not make it so weird that their legs look really weird, or their faces don’t look animal enough.JMB: I feel like you have a nice balance there, because they still have the structure of the animal, yet they are standing in ways that don’t feel unnatural. That’s one of the real strengths of your style that I noticed over the last year.

What advice would you give to a fellow student approaching this assignment of an artist’s postcard? And would you change anything now if you could go back?

AS: So no, I would not change anything. I got to work in color, and that was super fun. Advice? Just have fun: it’s an open assignment, open your mind, be creative. It could turn into anything and it’s whimsical in that way. You can push yourself out of your comfort zone and discover something new about yourself as an artist. Push yourself and have fun.

(IR= Isaac Ramos, JMB= Dr. Boehman)

JMB: Was this assignment useful, and if so, why?

IR: It was actually useful. It was really helpful. I remember the process we went through. You were always taking your time to go one-on-one with students. I remember at the beginning of the course you asked us “What do you want to work on?” and I remember that one of my goals was to work more on the backgrounds, because usually I focus more on the characters as the main subjects, but perhaps without a narrative. So I remember showing you my first sketches, and you definitely didn’t like them. You were like, “These are cool, but this is not what I am looking for. They need more work.”

JMB: If we can think back to those sketches, if I am remembering correctly, they were more closely based on photographs?

IR: Yes, exactly.

JMB: And so I was pushing you to go more into your own style, and I think what you came up with is really amazing. This is really beautiful.  In terms of information that you think that illustrators should have, was this useful?

IR: Yes. Although I do not consider myself an illustrator–I want to be an art teacher–but it is helpful because when you go to fairs and there are people who like your work, you want a card. I had an experience where I was showing in a gallery and I didn’t have a card. So I had to tell people my contact information. I didn’t know what to say, haha, besides “Follow me on Instagram!” One of the things you told us, was when we give a card to a person, it’s not only something they can remember easily, but is also like a gift, a small print  or piece of your art. So yes, an illustrator or artist should have some sort of presentation card.

JMB: How did you approach the assignment, or what was your process?

IR: After receiving the feedback from you that I needed to keep pushing myself, I got into my head a bit, trying to see exactly what was my voice. I think I did it a little bit directly, because the image that you see here is the street where I grew up. I was thinking about the things I told you I wanted to improve, like I said one of them was backgrounds and the other was narrative. So I had to come up with an image where I could show that I could do narrative illustration, but I can also work on having a background, and combine them together. So I started thinking about things that I did in the past, the things that I imagined as a child. For example, the image of the children riding in the wheelbarrow, is an actual memory of me and my friends when we were younger. And I wanted to add a little magic to it. I wanted it to be magical.

JMB: I think that sounds right. This Doña Toña: was this on your street?

IR: There is a store there, but Toña is my mom, her name is Antonia, so I wanted to add little Easter eggs in there. Also, in the background, there is a thing in Mexico, when there is a concert or a festival, instead of using billboards, they go to the walls and use graffiti instead, and put the information on the wall: on this day there is going to be a party, come and join us. In this case, I put “LaGuardia” there like it is the name of a music group or something like that.

JMB: What medium did you use?

IR: Gouache, watercolor, and colored pencil, with Canva for the text.

JMB: You talked about this a little bit already, but are there other cultural references in here?

IR: It was heavily inspired by my culture, the pop culture or things that are closer to me, like the man who is in the back, sitting on the wall. That is a traditional dance from La Mixteca Poblana, the region I am from, called Tecuanes, and the dancers are called Huehues. It’s passed from generation to generation, and different towns call it different things. My town is Puebla, and we call it by those names there.

JMB: The skeleton is very common in Mexican culture, but what about the flying snake?

IR: I always used to draw these…with butterfly wings or bird wings, I guess it comes from Quetzalcoatl, a serpent deity. But I also see it as sort of an alebrije, a made up character, based on sculptures that are made of different parts of animals that are supposed to be from your dreams.

JMB: If there was another student–or maybe one of your own students who was going to be doing this, since you’re going to be a teacher–what advice would you give them for this assignment?

IR: I think I would tell them just as you told me, to challenge yourself. Do not see this assignment just as showing a random work of art, but one that tells people the type of art and the type of skills you can give them if they hire you. Something you are proud of, that engulfs all of the skills you have.

JMB: Is there anything you would change about this if you were to do it again?

IR: Yes, I think I would work more on some technical parts, like the shadows. I like how it looks, but I could have done better, but there was a deadline. There are always things you can change. Maybe the trees.

JMB: That’s funny, I really like the trees. The setting is very evocative, like I know how it would feel to go to that place.