Cards of Christmas Past: Transition to Computer Prints


 Cards of Christmas Past

Transition to Computer Prints

Around the end of the 20th century I wanted to do Christmas cards with more detail and color than were practical with the various techniques we had been using.  Fine line-work and multiple colors were too tedious in block print or screen print for ephemeral Christmas cards, and our mailing list had become longer.  I switched to giclée printing, the artsy word for inkjet printing.  At the same time, we moved from traditional Christmas themes to nostalgic local and family holiday subjects.  The cards were composed as line drawings or paintings, scanned, and then adjusted and modified in Photoshop.  Here's one of the earliest, from 2000, a bird's eye view of our house and its immediate neighborhood circa 1900...

And here's the text...
The view was drawn in pencil, then scanned.  The line drawing was converted to blue via Photoshop, and I used Photoshop to add the spot colors.

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