A collection of old Christmas cards

December 14th, 2007

It’s Christmas time! I love Christmas and I love send Christmas greetings. I’ve been sending home-made Christmas greetings since 1989 almost every year. For me, I don’t think there’s a more personal and loving way to greet Christmas than doing my own card. In the 90′s, for a couple of years, I even recorded a bunch of Christmas songs with my friend Lali and my old girlfriend Ela and got them sent to my close friends and family. That was pretty fun to do, even when the results where pretty amateur!

I’ve trying to remember all the Christmas cards that I’ve been sending and digging in the drawers in search of them. I couldn’t find them all but I managed to rescue some of them. And of course, since Naomi and I started Intuitive Designs in 2002 we’ve been sending Christmas greetings to our clients as a way to thank them to work with us, so if you are one of them you may be receiving your card very soon!

Christmas Card 1989, Koldo Barroso

So these are some scans of some of the Christmas greeting cards I have sent. Starting with this engraving from 1989, a couple of years after I first started etching engraving, I did this piece a technique of drawing with a pen. I remember this character of the Christmas Tree-Man came up to my mind while I was visiting the old little village of my ancestors in the Basque Country, Lendoño. It was soon before Christmas and I decided to go for this idea of a different way to represent the spirit of Christmas. Maybe in the way that my grandmother and great-grandparents would imagine a magical figure coming from the woods to bring light. I think I may recover this character sometime for a little Christmas story or something similar.

Christmas Card 1990, Koldo Barroso

This Christmas card from 1990 is also an etching engraving. For this one I used the technique of aquatint, painting directly on the plate with acid using a pencil. I also used powdered resins for the starry sky. This one represents the Star of Bethlehem, I always thought that the story about a wonderful astronomy event guiding the wise men was so magical and beautiful.

Christmas Card 1991, Koldo Barroso

This other card from 1991 was an acrylic painting that I later color-photocopied. Sadly, I don’t keep the original painting today. I took the idea of the star further to represent the Seven Sisters, the Pleyades. Probably because around this time I had a lucid dream where I met an old wise woman who told me she was from a planet in The Pleyades. This woman also told me that I would work with computers in the future. At the time I hated computers, I didn’t want to have anything to do with computers. It was 1991 and they were cold and ugly, and I used to think they were only useful to waste your time playing video-games. It’s funny, but by 1996 I started realizing about the wonderful possibilities of computers in arts, design and music, and I got my first computer. Soon later I started focusing all my professional life to computers and the Internet, so whatever the dream meant it was damn right! So sometimes when I look up to the sky I have this feeling there’s somebody out there…

Christmas Card 1994, Koldo Barroso

In 1994, I did this other Christmas card influenced by some stained-glass windows that I saw during a visit to Salisbury’s Cathedral, by the Preraphaelite artist Burne-Jones and made by Morris & Co. They’re just delightful! I always wanted to learn how to do stained-glass but I ended up doing this little piece of watercolor featuring an angel.

Christmas Card 2006, Intuitive Designs

This Christmas card was sent by Intuitive Designs in 2006 and is a vector digital work that I finished up in Photoshop. For the background I used some vector brushes of snowflakes. I barely ever use brushes done by other people, but this one time I did an exception considering the snowflake figures are not necessarily something personal that someone has created, but patterns from nature. I remember I wanted to do something with a Eastern touch and I got influenced by pictures of the Chinese dragons and the revolving fireworks in the Chinese New Year’s Eve parade.

We don’t want to kill the anticipation to our clients who are waiting for our new card, so I’m going to wait for another week until they get it and then I will post here the latest Christmas card. Meanwhile, Merry Christmas everybody!

Testimonials

"It is pure joy to enter the imagination of artist & writer, Koldo Barroso. His is a world of delightfully whimsical and bizarre characters brought to life with sensitivity, skill and humour.

This is creativity at its very best - inventive and poetical, its charm simply magnified upon repeated viewing.
Truly magical."

Lorell Lehman

"I received the package!!! Your talent is awesome! Thank you so much I love them. I have already framed them and have put in a place where my gaze will fall upon them frequently. I’m sure that everyone that visits my studio will also feel the Magical Radiance of your Work. I feel so lucky. I feel like I own a museum piece!

Nadiia Evans

Through Koldo Barroso’s art we see magical characters and are drawn into an enchanted world. His storytelling captures your imagination and heart as he weaves life into each of his drawings. I am in awe of his incredible talent and passion for not only his work but for life.

Erin Hammill

How delightful. Thank you for the all the care and skill you have put into this illustration. I was touched and intrigued by your particular interpretation of "C'est La Vie" to see how you had taken the piece beyond its original form of a study in melancholy.

Peter Sinfield

Koldo Barroso is a brilliant and very original artist. His uniquely beautiful style of illustration is inspirational. You can feel the joy and fun that runs through all of his work.
We were blessed to have him do the illustration and cover design for our album "Life Stories" and couldn't have been more delighted. I feel his energy and wonderful artwork are as much a part of the album as the music itself, it so captured the mood and meaning of the project.

Kimara Sajn