a snowflake story
« Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty » - Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
Hello! It’s Lea again,
I hope you had a great week. If you don’t know me, it's nice to meet you! This is Sunday Spreads, my weekly personal illustration challenge. Now, since I started doing collage here on Substack, I have painted around 100 paint textures following the same method, paint the paper, punch a hole, hang it to dry, repeat.
(A little gif of all my scanned textures)
And the by product of this method has been little confettis of various size and color that I keep in the smallest mug ever on the side of my desk, ready to be toppled over.
And for a while, I have been wondering what to do with all these confettis, but as the cup was getting more and more full, I needed to act quickly. So today, we’re making a story about snow. ❄️ ( yes I know, it’s May and we’re in full spring.)
I started sketching digitally very rough ideas for composition, while looking for a story.
And I guess the general idea of every snowflake is unique, not two quite alike, just like people started to surface. It might also be because this line from one of my favorite show Our Flag means Death has been living in my head rent free. If you haven’t seen the show it’s a Comedy Pirate show that deconstructs Toxic masculinity and it’s just a pure gem, I really recommend it, it’s my ultimate comfort show.
“Mr. Buttons: Raids are like snowflakes.
Stede Bonnet: No two quite alike?
Mr. Buttons: Well, no, they almost always end in terrible bloodshed. Snowflake might not be the best comparison.”
But I was also inspired by the snowflakes from the artist Chris Ware in his graphic novel Rusty Brown.
And while doing more snowflake research, I stumbled upon this Physicist who calls himself a Snowflake designer, now get this, it’s real, he can actually design snowflakes. It is insane! Like he has a machine with control temperature and humidity and he can actually predict which shape the snowflake will take. How crazy is that ? You can watch him at work here.
( here are examples of snowflakes he designed in his lab)
Okay, I think I have rambled to you long enough about snowflakes, let’s start collaging. I knew I wanted to remake some kind of zine, but changing the format. So I took an A4 sheet of paper and cut it in half vertically and folded the 2 parts to have a little landscape folio zine.
And I started collaging. Now it was a messy process, bits and pieces everywhere. And I spent a lot of time on the first illustration, not gluing anything down for now, but just shifting pieces until they felt right.
And finally I was able to finish all the illustrations for the zine.
I scanned all of them and did some adjustments on procreate as well as fitting them in my template and adding text. Here are the collages straight from the scanner:
And here is the final print !
I feel really happy with how it turned out and I can’t wait to print a bunch for family and friends.
Anyways, Let me know what you think, and don’t hesitate to reach out. I am always looking to connect with fellow artists & illustrators to share the joys and sorrows of creating pretty pictures from our heads.
Lea
