Flying through time

This blog is getting loopy in very fun ways. A year ago, I blogged about a cut paper postcard I made the year before, reflecting that I would have liked to do something similar but to then lay the cut paper on photo paper to create a cyanotype. A few weeks later, I got this card from Lynn showing me she had tried my idea out. It worked!

In other words this blog post was two years in the making in that it is about a card that was inspired by a blog post that was inspired by a postcard made two years ago...

Africa

So this card is of an African image.  Jessica drew it while talking with a friend on Skype, pretty impressive that she did this great drawing at half attention.  Its so detailed the way she's layered the colors!

She wrote on the back, comparing her ideas of West Africa before getting there to the life she'd experienced since arriving.  She had some different ideas than what she ended up seeing.  It was so interesting to me that this was the card I am posting about having just come home from my own Africa experience.  Having just come back from Tanzania I find myself thinking about the same thing.  Tanzania is full of wonderful people, nature, and overall spirit but lacks infrastructure that makes life easier.  People seem to spend so much time doing the basic tasks of survival even in big cities. I know Jessica has a lot of great work going on with her organization and its great to see how she's meeting a true need!

Rothko and Yoga

Jessica was inspired by those two things to draw this illustration with a nice color combo!  She asked me how things were wrapping up with school, remember she was hyper and giddy as a child and wishing me and the teachers luck as we corraled the kiddos for the last few weeks of June.  She was just getting back from vacation, or maybe still thinking about one from a few weeks back, while I was starting out my summer break.  I think the restorative theme of this card was good for both of us!

Book portraits

Lynn was catching up on cards last June; just as I am now. There are some months that I just cannot keep up. Having read about doing bookshop portraits - a portrait showing only what someone likes to read - on Jane Mount's website, she used our postcard project to take up the challenge. Since Lynn goes to the library regularly, drawing only books she owned was a constraint. However, she made due, including bookends she owned as a child (she loved that they were blue) and 'escape' books that she had enjoyed. It is a fun window into my pal's far away life.

Since I haven't had enough time to do pleasure reading lately, I became a bit nostalgic about escape books re-reading this postcard. Sounds like such a luxury! I am afraid that a book portrait of my current state of being would be a bit too serious. Sigh. Somehow I think Lynn might agree.

School is out for the summer

I missed a card Lynn did last may, so I am posting it now. This 'photo drawing meld' as Lynn called it turned out well. It reminds me of a drawing assignment I received in a high school photography class. We ripped one of the black and white photos we had developed into half and then drew the missing side. Since I had never taken a drawing class (and still haven't!) I remembered not being sure I was up for this. I surprised myself a bit to find that with a little effort I could make the other side of the house I had captured with my camera materialize in pencil form. Makes me want to do this exercise again.

On the underbelly of this card, Lynn wrote about wrapping up the school year for summer. In addition to saying farewell to some retiring teacher friends, she also hosted the school's girls' club End of the Year Party. Apparently, this meant containing 35 girls with a sugar high for a few hours. Wild from all of the pop they drank, they broke out into playing 'America's Got Talent' for an hour. (Somehow reading this, I assume they were drinking red Faygo... I have no idea why.) I have a feeling this made Lynn especially appreciative of the relative silence that came with summer.