This is the first post of a series I plan on doing called "behind the design"! Where I tell the story behind certain designs and products I sell.
This is a print called Ghost and flowers, featuring a ghost holding a wilting bouquet of flowers. This came about as I had just gone through my first ever brake up, and was being very dramatic and drawing a lot of wilting flowers, while listening to emo music. Which yes, is cringe, but I was 19 and who isn't cringe at that age? I then thought about adding a ghost into the mix, which gives you this :
I loved how it came out and sent it off to be printed. And for a while it was my best selling print, I was always sending off prints across the UK and US. At markets people would comment on it, saying how cute it is, how different it is, and sometimes how sad it is. This changed my view on the print. It became a piece of art that other people loved, and hung up in their homes. It stopped having the connotation of being sad over a girl.
In 2022 I looked at this print and saw how much I could improve it. So I sat down, and redrew it. It was fun to see how I did things differently this time around. Like the arm holding the small bouquet, the detail of the folds is so much better and more natural looking. The detail of the flowers too, they're actually consistent sizes! You can see how much my art had improved in those two years.
This is still one of my favourite prints. I no longer associate it with being a cringe teenager over a brake up. But a piece of art that can show my progress; it's beautiful and something that whenever I look at I smile.
I'm glad that 19 year old me drew the original piece. It holds a special place in my heart.