Jorge Luis Borges' short story "On Exactitude in Science" tells the tale of the rise and fall of an empire through five short sections.
This set of matchboxes aims to tell that tale through hand-drawn illustrations of the lifecycle of a match. Each matchbox tells one segment of the story, beginning with a fresh unlit match that symbolizes the empire's humble beginnings and ending with a discarded charred one, illustrating the empire's end.
When sketching for this project, I took inspiration from 19th century matchbox designs. I created a template border with decorative details and a banner reminiscent of 19th century matchboxes and used that when sketching my ideas for each box. I used my own hand as reference to create a sequence that clearly told the story of a singular match being lit and dying out.
After deciding how I wanted the images to be framed, I recreated the drawings digitally with a tool that mimicked the traditional shading of 19th century matchbox art. For each color on the covers, I painted paper with watercolors and scanned them to be used digitally in order to maintain a consistent texture throughout.
