Postcards: The Jabberwock

I was stuck for ideas when Westen suggested a frog or the Jabberwock.  Guess what appeared on the next two postcards?

Postcards: Gremlin Flasher

Postcards: Fighting Spirit

In my last post, I may have failed to mention my latest resource.  The Bluejackets' Manual from 1940!

This Naval training guide is a wealth of collage material.  There is an abundance of quotes I am likely to use as a jumping off point.  Check out this virtue.

I knew I had to find a human biped, preferably with pants.

Now, let's get this boy on a hill-top to somewhere he can blossom into the red-blooded go-getter he was meant to be.

Finally it all just needs to be thrown together and trimmed down to a postcard.

Postcards: The Moth

As is common with my frequently lent books, I can't find my copy of Archy and Mehitabel.  I was in need of a quote and in a Don Marquis mood, so I cheated and used Good Reads.

Postcards: Hofstadter's Law

My buddy Nic agreed to make me a book press out of some plywood I had, and in return asked only two postcards.  Pretty sweet deal, right?  Then I asked his preference of collage, drawing, or quote.  He asked for quotes.

Gorramit.

I didn't have any good Nic quotes on deck, so I browsed Wikipedia's list of eponymous laws.  He's sciencey and works in an office; there had to be something useful in there.  Hofstadter's Law is as good a place to begin as any.  I started with a sketch to see how well the text filled a postcard.

And then I took a stab at it.

Almost nothing about that worked out how I wanted it to, so I decided to have at it again switching from drawn guidelines (which I thought, incorrectly, I could blend out) to whitespace guidelines.

Postcards: Fun Fact #1999

90's music has dominated my arting soundtrack lately.  Eyeless by Slipknot came on; as soon as I heard it I knew I had to send it to Ross.  We were far more musically aligned in the 90's; he's guarantied to recognize the source.  That said, I had no real plan.  This wasn't a bolt of artistic inspiration from the heavens.  Just an excuse to reach out.  It's been his turn in the postcard exchange since July, might as well just fire off reminder postcards.

If this were solicited in any way, I might have tried it again to improve the text.  As is, I don't think appreciation of this card depends on handwriting as much as familiarity.

Postcards: The Wages Of Sin

As you well know, if you are a regular reader, is that I struggle with quotes.  Choosing them.  Laying them out.  Writing them legibly.  All of it.  You might think I would keep that in mind when adding someone to the postcard exchange, and you would be wrong.  I asked Pam if she wanted an image or quote, and she went with quote.  That was silly of me.

As usual, I turned to Terry Pratchett for my literary needs.  I considered “She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you,” but I thought that might lend itself to discouraging, which is not the goal of postcard exchange.  “If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy” is really great, but I have already used it, and wanted something unique for Pam's first card.

So I went with this.  

Below you can see me struggling with layout, which is 100% my MO.  I wrote the quote out once in grey, and knowing that I was early in the process just went ahead and wrote over it with the red.

I think it was around here I started whining to Jen about layout.  Here I switched the line spacing and went at it again.

Unhappy with the uniformity, I changed orientation, hoping to find a way to emphasize certain words.  I end up using less than half the space, but stumbling across a format that allows for emphasizing Death.  

Orientation not being the problem, I rolled back to the horizontal design, but incorporated the line split after Death.  The stamp in the corner solves some of my spacing issues, and is, in my opinion, cute.

Jen suggested I go with a brown background.  Actually, Jen suggested a hot pink background, or an institutional beige background, or a pink and brown background, a photo of an officer worker as a background, or someone being run over as a background, or a halo, or TGIFridays's green stripes.  I aimed for institutional beige and landed on sandwich bag brown.

Because any artistic process has to be as frustrating as possible once you have a goal, I put the stamp in the wrong spot.

When masking the card, I made the lower border two millimeters larger than the other three borders.  I then stamped the card upside down.  Luckily I have a tool for correcting this sort of error.

And there you have it.  Is it perfect?  No.  If it were digital, I would play with spacing until I had everything just so.  But is it as good as I can draw it by hand?  Probably.

Postcards. ARG!

Emily asked for a card for friend, and send me some quotes about dance.

Short, easy to draw, but... I dunno.  So I suggested some quotes, and Emily liked the one below.

I dunno why I thought I could draw that.  I had a decent draft, but completely whiffed on the author name.

I tried saving it, to no avail.

Decent penmenship, added a little color, and I fit the author on!  I did, however, wander all over the place, and Emily was not into the yellow.

Around this point I am considering hiring another artist to complete this assignment.

I am hoping the mistakes on this just contribute to the wabi sabi nature, and do not detract from the piece's quality as a gift.

This time, without the whiteout.

Every time, I have re-copied the original error of writing "for the past" instead of "of the past."  Oh.  Gor.  Rammit.  One more time.  Hopefully.