These are the last six Varga Girl cards that I created for my Art2Mail exchange. These cards taught me a lot, by the end, about what sorts of shapes and movements work well in silhouette and what doesn't. I think I didn't really think about how shapes translate without the shading that you get in a normal photograph and the loss of detail.
This card is a pretty good example of that, I think. In the original artwork, what you see is a woman with her arm bent back, as if she's scratching her shoulder, but here it looks almost as if she's got an arm amputated at the elbow. She's also wearing a skirt, but her legs look awkward because you don't see anything to define that big blob below her waist. I maybe should have treated her as if she were nude or in a bathing suit and cut in a gap to show the shape of her folded in leg. This one was also a good object lesson in colour - I should have given her a hat that would stand out more against the background, rather than making the flower stand out against the hat. It would have had more impact if she'd worn, for instance, a white hat with a purple flower. Still, I like it. The more I look at some of these cards I'm not totally sold on, the more I like them and am less bothered by these flaws that I can mention.
The thing that I was most scared of with these cards was that they'd come out looking tacky. Like the silhouettes you sometimes see on mudflaps for trucks, all massive chests and tiny waists and not much artistry. This card most reminds me of the mudflap girls because of her position, but I love this card too much to see too strong of a comparison.
This girl is the most plain Jane of my Vargas girls, which a little bit funny because I remember the original being quite saucy. I fought with this fabric for a long while, getting the girl's body to follow the line of flowers. She originally had a white flower in her hair, but it blended too much with the background, so I pulled it off. She needs some sort of spark to make her more visually interesting, so it's a shame about the flower.
Another girl who lost her floral embellishments. I should have put a ribbon in her hair or a flower. Ah well, she's lovely anyway.
Another of the awkwardly shaped girls who taught me about silhouettes. She also taught me that in some respects, Varga didn't have a terribly clear idea about how bodies bend, because I've never managed to recreate that particular arm movement. Her bent back arm looks almost like a large brimmed hat, rather than an arm, and I think I like that explanation. I so love thte fabric in the background of this. Gorgeous.
Here is another of my very subdued, quiet seeming cards. Like in the other card with a floral background, I had to fight to get my girl to stand/sit in just the right position. I didn't want either girl to look as if she were farting flowers. For all its quietness, I've loved this card since i first got a good look at it.
It was a little bit sad to leave my Varga girls behind when I moved on to my final collection of cards. I think they turned out amazingly well. I've had more requests for the woman in the polka dot sweater than I quite know what to do. If only they didn't take so long to sew.
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