Incoming and Outgoing Mail Art

Good afternoon (or whenever it is when you read this),

I  hope you had a great week.  Myself, I had a good week.  I've been looking for a new apartment, and I found one.  My apartment is too small and I've been making do for a long time.  This year I decided it's time to move.  My new digs will have an art studio.  I'm thrilled!  I move in two months; that gives me plenty of time to go through all my crap stuff.  Once I'm settled I'll give you a tour of my new studio (home office/art room).

I wanted to have my current project complete today so I could show it to you, but I'm still working on it.  I'll show you what I have so far, and then I can show you the finished version in my next post.

I'm trying out some new supplies with this project.  Blick watercolor block (hot press), a set of Schmincke watercolors, and a Pilot fountain pen.

First on the agenda was to unwrap each color.  This makes me happy!

Next the colors need to be swatched so I know what they really look like when applied to the watercolor paper.  As you can see there are some empty spaces where I can add more colors later.

Last step before starting the art was to fill the fountain pen with ink.  It came with a converter, and I bought a bottle of carbon ink.

Ready to start!  I usually draw my picture lightly with pencil, then go over it with ink, but this time I wanted to see how well I would do just diving in with the ink.  Not too bad, not great, but not bad.  I'll keep going with it.  This is what I have so far.  I sectioned it into four 4x10 inch parts.  When it's done I'll separate them and send to four different mail artists.  I'll show you when it's done.

Here's what I sent out this week:

Coco Muchmore needs some mail art for a class she's teaching, so I sent her these two pieces of mail art.  I  also included a couple of ATC's, but I forgot to take a photo of them for this post.  Here are the two pieces of mail art I sent.

I sent 13 of these to Miss Maxima's Goth Emporium for her zine, issue 6 Tribute II.  As I'm sure you already guessed, my project is a tribute to Poe.  The rubber stamp of Poe is hand carved from an eraser.  I found it in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (in Concord Massachusetts) as part of a geocache.  This photo came out a little light, but you get the idea.

Here's what I received this week:

From CutPasteSteph.

Front

Back

From Thomas Brown.

From, the master of horror envelopes, Monster A GoGo.