Vintage Cowboy Invitations – Custom Hand Painted Watercolour Artwork
In this blogpost today, I’m sharing a very exciting, rather out of the box, vintage cowboy invitations design that I created for a custom illustration client.
I’m Rubana, the designer and illustrator behind Crimson Letters. If you have a special event that you would like some exceptional invitations for, or you might need some illustrations for your brand or business, get in touch with me at rubana@crimsonletters.com or over on my contact page.
The vintage cowboy invitations design (above), really is one of my most detailed custom invitation design to date. To create a final design, I needed to produce several highly detailed watercolour illustration elements so that I could combine all of the separate pieces of artwork to compile the finished piece.
Colours
The client hated bright, gaudy colours, so from the start I knew that this custom watercolour design had to have more muted, calm colours to give that vintage / antique character that matched the mood board that I have developed for inspiration. I opted for calm deep browns, medium browns to sharper dark blacks and for the lighter hues focused on medium creams, caramel, gold and white tones to highlight an antique vintage feel and add a sense of interest and coherent style to the designs.
Inspiration for vintage cowboy invitations design
This really is one of the most critical starting points for the custom artwork for these vintage cowboy invitations or any custom stationery design. If the design inspiration for this vintage cowboy invitations is off and not fine tuned enough, so much time can be needlessly wasted on the wrong type of artwork being developed.
When you provide your design inspiration make sure you only choose highly relevant visuals to your chosen invitation designer or illustrator. I am personally, very visually inspired.
Visuals are key for me.
Finetune inspiration
When a clients presents their mood board, we will have a call and discuss every single image that is included.
- Which image inspired them the most?
- Which design is their most favourite?
- What sorts of colours are they looking for?
- What types of calligraphy is require and how ornate, or simple does the calligraphy need to be?
- What type of lettering do they prefer and to provide examples.
Once the visuals and mood board created by the client, or myself for the client, has been fully discussed, I make a good amount of notes of the consultation and then I know that I am ready to start the design process.
Design process for vintage cowboy invitations
These vintage cowboy invitations, without a doubt include some of the most complexed watercolour illustrations that I have created by hand to date. There are below eight highly detailed watercolour illustrations that I hand painted separately. After the watercolour process, I removed the background and layered each artwork element carefully, superimposing each layer of design before I could create a completely bespoke final design.
The lettering really challenging to design. First of all I penciled the letters out, then I started to add the watercolour paint. This was such a time consuming part of the process. In addition the lettering was the most complicated part of the design to squeeze into place upon the scrolls.
Here (below) is the final vintage cowboy invitations artwork elements all placed together to form a finished custom invitation design:
If you’d like to see some of my other main stream invitation designs, visit my portfolio page here.
This article was created to give you some inspiration for your wedding stationery. At Crimson Letters I believe that we find inspiration in the beautiful world around us, I know I certainly do! That’s why everything I create is made with love and passion so that I can produce unique, bespoke wedding stationery that my couples will love. Why not connect and keep in touch, I regularly post on my instagram account and Pinterest profile.
Are you ready to get started on your luxury handmade wedding invitations suite? These intricate designs take some time to prepare, so if you’d like to work with me don’t delay! Email me at rubana@crimsonletters.com or get in touch here.
