Paintings for Vasa and Korsholm - made by Julia Bäck / Work in progress 3/3

This is my third and final work in progress post.

The images for my paintings are done but the text is still missing. The letters have been made with pencil, ruler, ink, and lots of meticulousness (not exactly correct Swedish, but it is what it is, meticulousness). Even though I tried to make the letters as perfect as possible, I like it when human errors are visible. It indicates that it’s "authentic" and handmade.

Uppercase letters? Lowercase letters? How thick ink? Spacing? On the same line or different? Should two t's next to each other be connected or not???

The final stage was to place the motifs, text, and frames. Refine, refine more, refine the refined… Not a single millimeter on these paintings is unjustified haha, every line and click is thought through. That’s why I could confidently and proudly present my works to Aveo.

All motifs and text were drawn with my right hand. Additionally, my right hand also edited all images and text on the computer. The big advantage of doing the final work on the computer was all the endless possibilities to improve and compare. The only disadvantage was all the endless possibilities to improve and compare. The time I saved by not doing everything by hand, I probably lost through all the fine-tuning, reconsiderations, and decision anxiety. But there is no doubt that it was the right decision to handle the final work on the computer.

Don’t ask me how long it took to make these paintings, because I don’t have a good answer. 29 days. My free time. I didn’t measure the work in time, I measured it by the number of drawings that got done, how much I got done in a day. But it is strange when a hobby suddenly becomes a job. There is actually a day that I counted the working hours when I was going to sleep. 13-14 hours. If I had worked that long on any of my other jobs, that day would have felt unbearably long. This day didn’t feel very tough at all. I went to bed, got up, and did the same thing the next day.

Good people, that’s all I had to say about my paintings. If anyone wants to know something, feel free to send an email to julia@beck.fi. Thanks and goodbye!