MailART.

The idea is this: you create postcards for 25-30 others, they create postcards for you. Hmm.

I’ve never been any kind of visual artist; I don’t the faculty to draw what I see. But the MailART project intrigued me greatly. I spied a few of the cards done for the previous round, and I was struck by how different the artists’ cards were. I’ve dabbled in collage and scrapbooking. I thought I’d give it a try.

So, I got cards cut to size and bought way too many supplies. Spent hundreds of dollars on supplies. Bought paints, regular watercolors and metallic watercolors, acrylics, gouaches. Bought rubber stamps, ink pads, eyelets and a HUGE Crop-A-Dile, bought false coins and stencils and embossing materials that I have no idea how to use.

The theme this time around is “Human Being in Time.” I’m lucky that this theme kind-of jibes with the original idea that I got for the cards: to have each card feature a character, and a one-sentence story.

I spent a couple of days with the paints, layering on the watercolors and acrylics, mixing colors. I created about 50 mini-canvases total, and grouped them.
There are the dirty canvases and the dark canvases.


Dirty canvases.

The dirty canvases are layers of color that I eventually started smudging with a dry brush or paper towel. I have developed the utmost respect for people who know how to mix colors.

Brown. I need to learn how to make brown.


Dark canvases.

I really enjoy black paint.

It’s hard for me to not add too much black paint to other colors, which can easily make them muddy. But black paint on its own is majestic and beautiful. I painted a couple of intense, completely black canvases, and then started to smudge black on canvases, with dry brushes and paper towel.

So, the postcards are due in the next couple of days. I will take pictures and upload them here.

jul