Art process: Food and floral art series - Digital collage with watercolor

‘Reflections on art process and making connections through subject matter’

Some reflections today while packing up a couple wholesale orders for art prints from my studio + shop Rare Bird Co. 

For those who don’t really know what that means - I sell my work (art, jewelry, accessories, home decor, etc) to shops around the country. It’s one of the ways I earn income as a designer/artist. As opposed to selling my products straight to the customer, I also sell my products to shops (both brick and mortar and online shops) and they sell my goods to their customers. It's a beautiful symbiotic relationship.

Today, I was packaging art prints for a florist shop and bakery shop. It’s always fun to see what art resonates with which types of people as my artistic subject matter varies. It’s a given that my work will end up in general gift shops, but I am delighted when the shop is of a specific interest that I might not have considered as my audience. 

Of course, I do get quite a bit of orders from plant shops and florists though. Those shops seem to be on the trend and I also have a lot of nature inspired themes in my work.

Food art is a fairly new one though. I love that it opens up a connection to other food art enthusiasts. I love food (to eat and as an art subject) and I've really enjoyed exploring the colors and textures in illustration.

These digital collage art prints happen to be made around the same time. I remember it was Summer 2023. I was exploring working in a different way that I suppose I would call digital collage. 

I was making these very clean and sharp shapes in Adobe Illustrator, and then applying real painted watercolor textures within the shapes. It was a cool mix of digital techniques that I like to play around with, along with the analogue hand painted techniques that are feel so lovely and inspiring to do. I had a lot of fun with my explorations. You can see some bits of the process on Instagram here and here.

Later that summer I started playing with not adding the watercolor texture and just keeping them one simple color with texture added digitally for warmth and interest. This technique can be seen in these floral and nature art prints.

I rounded out the summer with some new food illustrations and plant illustrations and found a technique of working that I keep coming back to, though the process is always changing and evolving. I hope the people that find them love them as much as I enjoyed making them.

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As always, thanks for being here,

Pauline Stanley
Founder/Designer
therarebirdco.com

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