Starting out and gathering reference

I decided what view I wanted to use first of all.  A curved bay with golden sands, cliffs and a distant house with turf-topped headlands.  Jersey, in the Channel Islands, has plenty of coastal gems like this to choose from.

Next, I gathered reference of the Thrift flower (Armeria maritima) up close, and of clumps of thrift heading into the distance.

Reference materials

Rough Illustration

Working on Fluid 100 hotpress watercolour paper,with a Pentel P205 mechanical pencil, I drew up the scene.  Landscape first, distant thrift next, and finally a few flowering heads which would be executed with botanical detail in the foreground.

Pencil rough

Jersey Post like to see colour roughs of each element in a postage stamp commission, so I worked into the colours using light watercolour.  I use Winsor and Newton watercolour pans and half pans, and adore my Winsor and Newton Series 7 paintbrushes (a number 2 handles bigger areas of colour, and a number 1 and 000 manage detail).

Colour rough

The trick with landscapes, which I admit are not my forte, is not to overwork them or go too dark.  Always, the most pronounced contrast will be in the near foreground.  This means you have to ensure distant elements (the house on the shore, the waves breaking on the beach) are softened.  I still struggle with this.

I provided jersey Post with the colour rough, and in a suggested layout.  This helps them to visualise the illustration in context.

Colour rough in layout

Working into the Final

Once approved, it was time to take the colour rough to final stage.

This involves adding a lot more detail, and making sure the thrift jumps out from the background.  There are several tricks I used here, some more successfully than others.

Flattening out the background

To ensure that the thrift flowers take centre stage, and hold the attention, you need to “knock-back” the other parts of the illustration.  I used a series of very pale watercolour washes.  These have two purposes; first, they dull any white areas in the landscape, allowing the whites in the flowers to glow more prominently.  Second, they add a soft colour unity to the background.  This tricks the eye into seeing the landscape as a whole, and as slightly separate to the thrift blooms in the foreground.

Pale background wash drying on the landscape (note the shine from the wet paint on the right of the painting)

I spent a long time fiddling with these layers of very pale transparent colour.  The bright pink colour of the distant thrift made it impossible to simply put a clean blue or green wash over everything.  Those pinks still needed to glow, but not to jump out at you.  This means you have to balance the wash.  Blue enough to unite and knock back the landscape, not so blue that it makes the distant thrift purple.

Likewise, the structure of the composition meant the thrift in the immediate foreground was flanked and backed by more thrift.  Separating these elements without compromising the pink of the flowers was really hard.  Darkening behind the focus flowers is needed, but the risk of messing up the flowers behind them is high.  Go slowly, and build up layers of colour.  Re-appraise as you progress.

A few pale blue (Landscape components) and pale pink (background thrift) washes later, and I’d done most of what was possible.

Adding Detail

Another way to make the foreground jump out at you is to get really crisp and clear detail in the flowers at the front of the illustration.  Higher contrast is required, as is botanical accuracy.  Luckily, I’ve done sketchbook illustrations of thrift in the past.  These are vital when it comes to figuring out the anatomy of the globe-like flowering-heads.  I also refer to the excellent line drawings of Stella Ross-Craig.

There’s been a lot of illustrating of maritime species recently, so the Thrift I completed for Field Studies Council’s leaflet on Sea-side flowers was helpful too.

Thrift Armeria maritmum completed for FSC

As always, at this point in the process there are lots of moments of panic.  It doesn’t feel like it’s coming together right.  The flowers look blurry, mucky, anatomically wrong.  How on earth to get the stamens (which are pale) to show up?  Each of these challenges has to be calmly worked through.

Thrift flower detail with detail picked out and stamens added

It’s always a fine balance between over-working an illustration (which kills it and sucks the life and brightness from it) and getting enough crisp detail in there.  I used a touch of white gouache to bring the stamens out.  A pale top-wash of a ridiculoulsy bright pink (Doctor Martin’s Hydrous inks) helped make the petals glow.

Completed illustration with reference and Doctor Martin’s ink just visible on the right.

Finishing the Thrift Landscape

Eventually you reach a point where you accept that it’s good enough.  It’s a funny thing, even now, having been a professional illustrator for 25 years, I’m always slightly disappointed that the illustration on the page is never as good as the one my mind had conjured up.  I think this is common with everyone who tries their hand at creating art, whether professional or a beginner.

Completed illustration, drying in the sun

Often it’s a good idea to go and have a swift cup of tea when you think you’re done.  When you return, you see the illustration in a slightly new light, and generally a more favourable one.  Which is lucky!

Conclusion

Using a wide array of illustration techniques allowed me to complete this landscape.  Watercolour washes, ensuring contrast and fine detail were right in the foreground, tiny details in gouache…  When I saw it in context, on the presentation pack, I was really pleased.  The design team at Jersey Post did a brilliant job with the lettering and layout.

I made a film of the later stages in completing this illustration, and you can hear me talking through these challenges and trying different approaches.

The post Jersey Post: Illustrating Thrift appeared first on Lizzie Harper.

Illustrating stamps

Each stamp issue involves illustrating six stamps, a presentation pack, an envelope for the First Day Cover, and a date stamp.  This is the sixth series of stamps I’ve done for Jersey Post, so I’m used to the sizes and the exacting nature of the work.

Coastal Flowers: Stamps

The six species chosen for the stamps were all beauties.  One of the main challenges with illustrations for postage stamps is to make sure the composition works.  You need to leave room for the queen’s head (the Gudgeon), and the name of the species illustrated in both English and Latin in the bottom right hand corner.

Common Centaury stamp

Seaside Daisy stamp

The illustrations are all completed far larger than the reproduction size, and to an identical format.  It may not sound that hard, but cramming very differently shaped plants into the same layout, without making them look odd or crushed, is tricky.

Sea Rocket stamp

Sea-holly Stamp

Another challenge is that each flower requires a background.  This needs to echo the plant habitat, and be clear, but unobtrusive.  Sand is easy enough; an ochre colour with splatterings from a toothbrush.  With shingle, each pebble needs illustrating.  If the plant grows on coastal grassland, you need to show the grass without distracting from the focus of the illustration.

Yellow Horned-poppy stamp

Rough Star-Thistle stamp

You also have to keep in mind that the illustration will be reduced to 3cm x 2.5cm.  Anything too complicated will cease to register clearly.  Of all these six designs, the one which suffered most from reduction at reproduction is the Rough Star thistle.  It still reads, but the composition was a little too complicated for the final size of the stamp.

The photo below shows me illustrating the poppy, and gives an idea of the size of the original artwork.

Illustrating the Yellow Horned-Poppy

Coastal Flowers: First Day Cover

The illustration for the first day cover (FDC) appears on the corner of an envelope.  This envelope has the whole series of stamps poppped onto it, which are franked and sent out to collectors and post offices.

One of my favourite seaside flowers featured here, Sea stock Matthiola incana.

It’s such a delicate flower, with the barely-mauve petals, and the soft blue-green leaves.

It’s interesting to note that lots of coastal plants have blueish, hairless, and waxy leaves.  Please check out my blog on salt-tolerant plants (Halophytes) for more on this. !! LINK!!

The format for this illustration is far freer.  It simply needs to look classy in the corner of the envelope, and not get in the way of the six stamps or the text.

FDC envelope featuring Sea Stock

Coastal Flowers: Presentation Pack

The presentation pack featured a cliff view with Thrift.  I’ve recently written a blog on the processes and challenges involved in completing this illustration which I’ll publish soon, and made a film of me working on the image.

Again, the original is larger than the reproduced illustration, although less than with the stamps artworks.

This presentation pack can be stored in a ring binder, and has the series of six mint stamps within it.

Coastal Flowers: Date stamp

The last component of this “Post and Go” stamp issue is the date stamp.  This is what gets printed on top of the stamps on the first day cover, and echoes the theme of the issue.  I chose the Yellow Horned-poppy for the date stamp as it was the clearest and simplest of the flowers.  More than any other element of the stamp design process, the date stamp needs to be extremely simple, and it’s vital that it doesn’t obscure the stamps it’ll be franking.

This one made me laugh a bit.  Initially I submitted an illustration of the flower with its seed pod.  Then the designer and I had a re-think – there’s just something a little too potentially rude about the image.  I revised it and took out the seed case, and this is the illustration used for the final.

Artwork for date stamp, with then without seed pod.

Conclusion

The Jersey Post Coastal Flowers issue was such a fun project to work on, I really enjoy working with Jersey Post.  I’m pleased with the designers who’ve done good things with the text and presentation pack.  I love the species which were chosen and it also tied in with coastal flowers I was illustrating for Field Studies Council, so I had all my maritime flora reference to hand.  It inspired me to research and write a blog on salt-loving plants, the Halophytes.

I hope Jersey Post will continue to use me as an illustrator on their stamp issues.  The work is exacting and enjoyable, the pay is good, and you never know what theme the next issue will focus on!

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