‘I’ve Got A Feeling’ is a weekly illustration project created by illustrator Camille Medina, where she draws her emotions, reactions and personality traits as symbols and characters.
Camille started working on the project at the beginning of 2020, just as the world got hit by Covid-19 and says that the project was a great thing to focus on during lockdown as “there was a lot going on in [her] head, and it was comforting to be able to look inwards and try to process and understand it all”.
More info: Instagram
Camille says: “The difficulty with a project like this is to try not to be too negative. But at the end of the day, I’ve learned that often it’s a question of balance: negative traits often come from defence mechanisms and too much of a positive trait can also sometimes become slightly negative. That’s the case for the card of The Hourglass which represents punctuality for example. In the right amounts it’s a good and useful trait to have, it shows organisation, conscientiousness, reliability, and respect for other people's time as well as your own. But there's a fine line between being conscientious and reliable, and being uptight and inflexible.”
When asked about why she decided to put her illustrations on tarot-like cards, Camille says that it’s because she finds there’s a part of mystery that surrounds what goes on in our heads, “it’s intangible and sort of mystical in a way.” She also thought that it would be fun to have a deck of cards that could be used to help people improve their communication and how they talk about their emotions. “Sometimes when we interact with other people we default to automatic emotional responses that make us do or say things that we might regret, or that don't align with who we really are. And sometimes it’s just difficult to explain how we feel. I thought that it could be useful to be able to just pick a card and say: “hey, this is what is going on in my head right now!” or for our spouse, partner or friends to be able to say: “you know what, it looks just like The Dark Cloud [note: one of the card characters] right now!” I am not a psychotherapist but I feel that it helps to dissociate the emotion or behaviour from yourself.”
Camille has already posted 22 cards and says that she has enough ideas to get to at least 52 (that's a whole year worth of emotions, reactions and personality traits!).
Although the physical deck of cards doesn’t exist yet (Camille says that she’d love to get it manufactured one day) you can discover a new card and its explanation every Thursday on the ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’ Instagram account (@ivegotafeelingproject), submit a feeling on the project’s website (https://ivegotafeeling.co.uk), and you can even get yourself the merch of your favourite card in the shop (https://ivegotafeeling.threadless.com)!
