"CALENDER GIRLS" part 1

After having the inital idea for a collection there is an extensive planning phase behind the scenes. Here I am going to begin sharing what goes into making my December 2021 collection named "Calender Girls" - a play on vintage pinup illustration calenders but with my own twist and style called "Vintage Girls".

American Pinups and Folksjälen

1. THE INSPIRATION

I have a love for vintage illustration and it might not be a surprise that I am draw to 1910s-1940s aesthetics.

My inital inspiration was this vague memory of an Elsa Beskow poster I saw as a child that is still intertwined with how I see and apperciate the different seasons of the year. A quick google found me the images so that I can share them with you. These are 1909 illustrations that capture the essence of something... a collective agreement that this is the seasons, this is the aesthetics. I will be combining this with something very far from the Nordic "folksjälen" (eng. Collective Folk Spirit or Folklore) - an idealized woman based on the 1940s Americana icon of "the pinup".

2. RESEARCH AND PLANNING

I don't ever look at old pinups but hundreds of them live in my head, the cultural impact is that strong and I bet you can conjure up an image of one without even trying. So instead of that I will be exploring modern images of women, usually in advertising or in the "social media" rage to find interesting poses and expressions of modern women. Our internalized image of what an ideal woman is in 2021. My favorites are possibly the Kardashian sisters, even though I have never painted one of them they capture something with their sexualized personas made for social media consumption. I can look at hundreds of pictures and once I find a pose that speaks to me I will make a little sketch to remember it and possibly scribble down ideas for colors and potential coloring. This is my currrent "sketch" for the project.

"CALENDER GIRLS" part 2

The next step in the process is maybe the trickiest one.

Selecting the pages

I have a big collection of vintage magazines and I'm always hunting for more. When selecting the intial candidates I had two criterias: color and mood. I browsed about 20 different magazines and selected about 20 pages that matched my criterias before I made my final selection. After that I looked at my planning sheet to match season, color and composition to each page. These are the twelve I choose in the end and they are a mix of 1920s-1960s pages from both Swedish and American magazines.

"CALENDER GIRLS" part 3

I thought I would show you some work in progress before the launch on Monday the 13th.

Work in progress

ART PROCESS AND MATERIALS

The base for each girl is a vintage magazine page and then I use pencil (7HB usually) to draw the outlines and guides before I use waterproof ink or liner for the heavier darker lines. Sometimes I will add some watercolor before this step, sometimes after. To "white out" parts of the paper I usually use an acrylic marker in the color "Parchment" which is a good match to most papers or a thin gouache.

I mix colored pencils, acrylics, markers and watercolor to get the desired effect. For the white details I like using gelpens and/or soft pencils.

SCANNING AND EDITING

Scanning and editing the pages is one of the trickiest parts. A lot of detail and color adjusting is needed to get the look I want and I do crop and change parts. For this series I've been mixing digital and traditional which you can see in the bright circles I've added to each page (A sun/moon symbol).

HAPPY LITTLE ACCIDENTS

Sometimes you mess up. The paper rips, you use to much water and scrub until the paper desolves or you just fuck up and it looks ugly. To work with these "accidents" I've been exploring using a "collage" techinque and it makes the mistakes look more intentional.

(It's also great for covering elements of a page that ruin the composition.)