Postcards. Sometimes I get them.

This was unexpected.  This postcard looks like it traveled thru time to get to me.

Postcards: Learning Collage

This makes me happy.

Postcards. Bubbles.

Obviously, I have postcards on my brain.  Sending and receiving post is itself pretty magical.  Postcard exchanges allow me to send and receive art; how freaking cool is that?  Pretty freaking cool is the answer.  Answering my call for postcard pals, my buddy Scott sent me this:

I like it!  I was inspired to place with this pebbly texture.

Didn't quite make it, did I?  Pretty common for me.  I haven't understood that technique well enough to make it dance to my tune.  I have no doubt bubbles will be revisited.

Whoops. Postcards.

Sorry!  I have been working on Christmas cards instead of postcards.  I am also sitting on some cards; I tend not to scan them until I am ready to mail them, and a number of my friends have not written back.  I think I am waiting on replies from Westen, Ross, Jen, and Melanie.  So that will be four more posts once I am ready to send those cards.  I sent this one to Fred, a real cool dude.

Experimental vs Conceptual: my work on postcards

While I was deep in my podcast phase, I listened to the Revisionist History episode Hallelujah. The moment of greatest interest to me was when the host, Malcolm Gladwell, talked about David W. Galenson's book Old Masters and Young Geniuses.  Galenson posits that there are two fundamentally different approaches to creation; experimental creators that work by trial and error, and conceptual creators that make sudden breakthroughs.  That's not quite what either of them say, but if you're really interested you'll look into it.

What did happen, was that I looked at how I make art, and once again arrived at the conclusion I can't create things very well in my head.  I can manipulate things pretty well, but they need a start.  I fundamentally work through trial and error, to the point that I need to create something, even if I end up not keeping a single piece of it, just to have a starting place for manipulation.

A friend of mine, artist and sage Maggie Gosselar, said

The folks in the "middle ages" didn't think of themselves as living in the middle of history.

Who would?  Every era has tried to use variations of "new" and "modern" to describe their

culture, clung to them even after they ceased to be relevant.  We are in the middle of history.

We don't end here.  Oh my babies, there is so much more yet to come.

I knew I had to do something with it.  But what?  I am still in the infancy of word art.  I am an art student.  What do I do?

Trial and error.

I start pretty rough sometimes.

I thought maybe having lines would help, but it was too soon.  I didn't like it, so I tried again with different pens.

You can see me trying to figure out what emphasize and how.

One of my goals is always to reduce white space.  I started playing with repeating text as a background wash.

I am pretty frustrated by this point.  Nothing is sticking from draft to draft.  It feels like no progress has been made.  Failure is always an option.

This isn't terrible.  Overall.  My cursive is terrible.  So is the spacing.  But I sort of like the first two lines.

Still playing with backgrounds.

When in doubt, dazzle and distract with a good ink.

Closer.

Closer.

Finally committing ink to postcard.  Wobbly but legible.

Then I looked at two of my favorites of my own hand.

I realized I was not done.  My dissatisfaction had a new direction.

That one was pretty good.  I thought I'd go straight to making a postcard.  Apparently, I had some other things to work out.

Once again, I think I have hit an end point with this one.  How long will it last?

Postcards with Plum and Tumeric

Postcards and tea stains

I will admit it; I used another wrench guide.  What can I say?  It looks cool.  Coffee and tea stains just make it look more like vintage ephemera. The thumb in the first panel was painted with the latest batch of tea ink.