A business I follow on Facebook recently announced their intent to promote some artists, for free. I was thrilled, at first, thinking that they may be a good fit for me, but then my heart sank a little as I read their descriptions of what they wanted to promote. "If you made it with your own two hands, we might want to work with you." Oh.
I definitely had their promotional idea in mind as I took my product photos for the site. Did I personally manufacture these stickers? Absolutely not. But they come from something handmade, and I wanted to showcase that. They come from paint markers and a micron pen in a notebook (possibly one of my car doodles that I often do while waiting in the drop-off line at my daughter's school). They come from scans and hours of editing those scans in Illustrator, making sure the colors are right and the edges are smooth, while still retaining their doodle qualities.
The same things can be said about this Pearl Crescent Butterfly sticker. Hours of drawing, based on photos I took on hundreds of hikes. Then more time in Photoshop cleaning things up. Is it handmade? My hands were definitely all over it, but no, not in the same way the Get Lost drawing it was based on was handmade.
It's an interesting thought as I continue on in this product journey. We are so used to walking into a store and seeing patterns and designs everywhere we turn, but those images on every product started out somewhere...
Maybe they started in a notebook, in a drop-off line at an elementary school that inexplicably starts thirty minutes later than the high school, by a tired mom who has a kid in each, while she sips her iced coffee.
I wonder what these car beetles will become?