Postcards: Even the Mighty Oak Was Once an Acorn

These are the things I think about if I don't keep myself busy.

Postcards: Three for One

I can't find any of my process photos for these three cards; I thought I might as well post them as a group.  Here ya go!

She was originally watching a kid get on a bus.

Prophylactic is not associated with toothbrushes for me, but that's where that came from.

Just not feeling 2018, ya know?

Postcards: Tik-tok, the Royal Army of Oz

 Return to Oz is amazing.  One of the best kids movies of all time.  

Just important facts before we go further.

My buddy Jane was feeling low, or so it seemed.  I roughed out a few variations of sad robots, but nothing quite felt right.  Working on robots put me in the mood for Tik-tok.  It honestly doesn't take much.  I identify deeply with a portly mustachioed being that winds down.  So that's the route I took.  It may not have been a natural choice to cheer someone up, but that's never been my strength.

Postcard: Joan Descends the Fifteen Steps

While perusing the antiques mall, Carley talked me into buying this The Catholic Miss of America.

It is an interesting if problematic time capsule of information for teens in the 1950s.  This is one of my first cards using material from it, but I am likely to mine a few more when I return to collaging.

The alchemical text is not, shockingly, from The Catholic Miss of America.

Woven together the make an interesting scene, and I hope to revisit this style.

Postcards: Portrait with Caps for Eyes

I took the caps off of two boxes of soy milk, drew black dots on them, and placed them over my eyes.

This is a drawing of that.

Postcards: The Vaults Were Never Meant To Save Anyone

Oh man, I can't remember where this one started.

I am pretty sure this is a GE ad.  For refrigerators, or an all electric kitchen.

Then I took some text from an article about fallout shelters.

The final line is from Fallout.

Postcards: Inspiration Objects

I am not a hoarder.  I have a lot of stuff; it's my goal to follow after my parents and have a wizard's collection.  I want to have a library of knickknacks, curios, tools, art supplies, and books.  I am not a hoarder.  More of an eclectic lender.  I have a tackle box full of bric-a-brac for decoration, inspiration, and artistic reference.  I also have a drawer on the art desk filled with stamps and trinkets.  From all these doodads I pulled a rock, a key, a matchbox, a compass, at ticket, and a... blueish thing.  Thus a postcard began.

I really wanted to have another crack at a postcard without heavy black outlines.  I still used pencil for suggesting boundaries, but I attempted to let the watercolors do the bulk of the work.

The letters were a pain-in-the-ass, but they were legitimately outlined in black; I did not consider using a marker to be cheating. 

I also used a fountain pen with translucent grey ink add in some details.

 

To finish things off, I relied more heavily on my pens, including a white gel pen.

Bonus Round:  The Reference

Though actually after making sure this setup worked, I painted each object separately, often moving the object and the paper around in relation to myself and the light-source.

Postcard: A man without.

This card started very imagery first.  Sometimes I see an image that makes me think "oooh, I should try that."  When I read an article... or blogpost... or something about someone complaining about the style of ad depicting something breaking through the surface of the advertisement I thought "really?  I want to try that."  I mean, look at this bird, refusing to be held back.

So I started with Mister McSeriousFace.  He looks like he is repressing some things.  But what is he holding back?

People in a fire?

People in front of a door?

A nurse in front of the needy?

Boom!  Nurse wins.  The ad for the Staunton Military Academy has been floating around in my collage supplies for a while.  I feel like I remember my father taking about Staunton, or a word that sounds like Staunton.  I dunno, but it had that air of familiarity that I cut it out, assuming I would eventually find a use for it on a card for my parents.  This isn't a card for my parents, but the serious guy in the Staunton ad feels like a good repetition of Mister McSeriousFace.  "Or do without" was in my text folder, so I put it down without gluing it while I searched for a preceding companion.

A Life Magazine article about courtship provided me "why you should string your sweetheart along," or something close enough to it that I was able to pull "string your sweetheart along" from it.  Huzzah!  Implied narrative.