I joined the Mail Art Movement as a fun way to create and swap small, original works of art through the mail as postcards. Each Wednesday, you receive a random name and address for a fellow enthusiast, either in your own country or somewhere in the world, and someone else receives yours. So, if you do the math, this adds up to one unique, handmade postcard going out in the mail per week. So, of course, I have over a dozen ready to go, and that doesn’t count the two that have already been mailed off.

With all of these postcards hanging around, I also joined Postcrossing, which is huge. Of course, many of these participants specify they don’t care for handmade cards. Because it’s random, I’ll likely need to send a professionally made postcard, of which we have plenty. It’s been fun learning about other countries, buying stamps, and even fretting about what to write on the back of a postcard. We’ve started searching antique stores for old postcards, too, which has become an absorbing hobby in its own right.

I had a great deal of fun making these postcards, all of which are monotypes from the gel plate. I’ve expanded my horizons from charcoal transfers by adding soft pastel, Neocolor I wax pastels, “reverse painting” with acrylic paint, and even creating a stencil. For that effort, I created until I couldn’t create any more. I started with a charcoal sketch based on a blurry photo I took years ago of a foal trotting across a field. I then made a typical charcoal transfer monotype (second row on the right) which remains my favorite. I’ll always love detail. From there, I traced the image and cut out a stencil using Duralar. I spent a confusing but fun afternoon creating many variations, some being more successful than others. The solid foal creates an illusion if you look at it long enough. Is it running toward you or away?

Off I go to send my first Postcrossing postcard to someone who likes animals and handmade cards. Which one should I chose?