Through the month of June I participated in a wonderful exchange between artist friends from Twitter, curated by @Art_News, called #MailArt. 33 artists in all, we sent each other original postcards of our art. It was both time consuming and really fun- I found myself developing new ideas using this medium that I would love to expand on further in my personal art.
I began with making handmade paper for the project. I had wanted to do this for awhile, and this project seemed the perfect way to experiment. How the paper turned out determine how I wanted to present my collages. I decided on using b&w photographic images from an old photography encyclopedia, mixed with original drawings drawn on tracing paper and collaged on the card as well. I sometimes drew on the actual card in ink, and used ink and gouache to enhance the tracing-paper drawings. I am now in love with tracing paper- such a thin, delicate medium to draw on, and it mixes in perfectly with other media as well because of its transparency.
Here are all the cards I created below. Each is approx 3 1/2"x5 1'2" in size, and made from pencil, ink, gouache & mixed media on handmade paper. My theme generally involves humans interacting with an environment based entirely on insects, rodents and birds that match the scale of humans. In some, humans actually become part of the environment in the form of plants, in others they are able to interact peacefully, and in others they work to have some form of control over the insects, rodents and birds.
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